Manipulating the insulator-metal transition through tip-induced hydrogenation.

Manipulating the insulator-metal transition in strongly correlated materials has attracted a broad range of research activity due to its promising applications in, for example, memories, electrochromic windows and optical modulators ^1,2 . Electric-field-controlled hydrogenation using ionic liquids ^3-6 and solid electrolytes ^7-9 is a useful strategy to obtain the insulator-metal transition with corresponding electron filling, but faces technical challenges for miniaturization due to the complicated device architecture. Here we demonstrate reversible electric-field control of nanoscale hydrogenation into VO ₂ with a tunable insulator-metal transition using a scanning probe. The Pt-coated probe serves as an efficient catalyst to split hydrogen molecules, while the positive-biased voltage accelerates hydrogen ions between the tip and sample surface to facilitate their incorporation, leading to non-volatile transformation from insulating VO ₂ into conducting H _x VO ₂ . Remarkably, a negative-biased voltage triggers dehydrogenation to restore the insulating VO ₂ . This work demonstrates a local and reversible electric-field-controlled insulator-metal transition through hydrogen evolution and presents a versatile pathway to exploit multiple functional devices at the nanoscale.
(© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)