Electrical triggering of metal-insulator transition in nanoscale vanadium oxide junctions

200 nm diameter Au contacts were fabricated by e-beam lithography on sputtered thin film vanadium oxide grown on conducting substrates and current perpendicular to plane electron transport measurements were performed with a conducting tip atomic force microscope. Sharp jumps in electric current were observed in the I-V characteristics of the nano-VO(2) junctions and were attributed to the manifestation of the metal-insulator transition. The critical field and dielectric constant were estimated from quantitative analysis of the current-voltage relationship and compared with reported values on micrometer and larger size scale devices. These results are of potential relevance to novel oxide electronics utilizing metal-insulator transitions. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3245338]