• DOI:10.1039/c1nr10179j
• Corpus ID: 28034126

Highly depressed temperature-induced metal-insulator transition in synthetic monodisperse 10-nm V2O3 pseudocubes enclosed by {012} facets.

@article{Sun2011HighlyDT,
  title={Highly depressed temperature-induced metal-insulator transition in synthetic monodisperse 10-nm V2O3 pseudocubes enclosed by \{012\} facets.},
  author={Yongfu Sun and Bingyan Qu and Shishi Jiang and Changzheng Wu and Bicai Pan and Yi Xie},
  journal={Nanoscale},
  year={2011},
  volume={3 6},
  pages={
          2609-14
        }
}

• Yongfu Sun, B. Qu, +3 authors Yi Xie
• Published 8 June 2011
• Materials Science
• Nanoscale

Monodisperse 10-nm V(2)O(3) pseudocubes enclosed by {012} facets were successfully synthesized for the first time via a novel and facile solvothermal method, offering the first opportunity to elucidate the effect of finite-size and facet on the temperature-induced reversible metal-insulator transition (MIT) behavior of V(2)O(3). Very excitingly, the transition temperature of these V(2)O(3) pseudocubes drastically depressed from 133 K to 36 K and their corresponding hysteresis width highly narrowed from 17 K to 5 K, compared to the MIT behaviors of other irregular V(2)O(3) particles with average sizes of 10 nm, 20 nm, 40 nm, 170 nm and 2 μm. Notably, the size-related surface energy, grain boundary connectivity and volume expansion could be used to account for their strong size-dependent transition temperature and hysteresis width. Moreover, the improved grain boundary connectivity associated with well-defined {012} facets enabled these 10-nm V(2)O(3) pseudocubes to display a 10 times higher resistivity jump (at the order of 10(5)) and by nearly one-half smaller hysteresis width of 5 K than the irregular 10-nm V(2)O(3) particles with randomly exposed facets, directly evidencing the pronounced influence of facets on the MIT behavior. Briefly, the present work not only develops an effective strategy for synthesizing high-quality nanocrystals but also provides an excellent platform to investigate the size- and facet-dependent temperature-induced MIT behavior, enabling to design smart electrical switching nano-devices in the rapidly developing ultra-low temperature field.