Future Trends in Microelectronics: From Nanophotonics to Sensors to Energy

Treating the Case of Incurable Hysteresis in VO₂

M. Gurvitch

Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, SUNY-Stony Brook, NY 11794 and NY State Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, Stony Brook, NY 11794, U.S.A.

S. Luryi

Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, SUNY-Stony Brook and NY State Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, Stony Brook, NY 11794, U.S.A.

A. Polyakov and A. Shabalov

NY State Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, Stony Brook, NY 11794, U.S.A.

1.   Introduction

Phase transitions present an opportunity for a useful application utilizing a natural proximity of two phases with different physical properties and an ability to trigger the transition by varying a transition-controlling parameter, such as temperature, or magnetic field, etc. There exist applications based on magnetic transitions, optical transitions, metal-insulator transitions, and superconducting transitions. Some of these phase transitions, especially those classified as first-order transitions (i.e. accompanied by the release or absorption of latent heat), are hysteretic in nature, so that the two phases transform into each other along different routes depending on the direction of change of a transition-controlling parameter. Such hysteresis can be essential for an application. A well-known example (in this case, of a hysteretic second-order transition) is a ferromagnetic material that can be magnetized by an external magnetic field and, because of the hysteresis, will remain magnetized when the external ...