Nanoscale self-organization and metastable non-thermal metallicity in Mott insulators.
Nat Commun
; 13(1): 3730, 2022 Jun 28.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35764628
ABSTRACT
Mott transitions in real materials are first order and almost always associated with lattice distortions, both features promoting the emergence of nanotextured phases. This nanoscale self-organization creates spatially inhomogeneous regions, which can host and protect transient non-thermal electronic and lattice states triggered by light excitation. Here, we combine time-resolved X-ray microscopy with a Landau-Ginzburg functional approach for calculating the strain and electronic real-space configurations. We investigate V2O3, the archetypal Mott insulator in which nanoscale self-organization already exists in the low-temperature monoclinic phase and strongly affects the transition towards the high-temperature corundum metallic phase. Our joint experimental-theoretical approach uncovers a remarkable out-of-equilibrium phenomenon the photo-induced stabilisation of the long sought monoclinic metal phase, which is absent at equilibrium and in homogeneous materials, but emerges as a metastable state solely when light excitation is combined with the underlying nanotexture of the monoclinic lattice.
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1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Nat Commun
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article