Dynamically tracking the joule heating effect on the voltage induced metal-insulator transition in VO2 crystal film

Insulator to metal phase transitions driven by external electric field are one of the hottest topics in correlated oxide study. While this electric triggered phenomena always mixes the electric field switching effect and joule thermal effect together, which are difficult to clarify the intrinsic mechanism. In this paper, we investigate the dynamical process of voltage-triggered metal-insulator transition (MIT) in a VO2 crystal film and observe the temperature dependence of the threshold voltages and switching delay times, which can be explained quite well based on a straightforward joule thermal model. By conducting the voltage controlled infrared transmittance measurement, the delayed infrared transmission change is also observed, further confirming the homogeneous switching process for a large-size film. All of these results show strong evidences that joule thermal effect plays a dominated role in electric-field-induced switching of VO2 crystal.