Electrothermal actuation of metal-insulator transition in SmNiO3 thin film devices above room temperature

Abstract

We demonstrate that a metal-insulator phase transition can be electrothermally actuated in the correlated complex oxide SmNiO3 (SNO) above room temperature from current-voltage measurements on thin film two-terminal devices. We simulate the internal temperature of SmNiO3 as a function of applied dc power by a Joule heating mechanism with substrate/electrode dissipation and find good agreement with experiment and device scaling. The results are relevant towards integrating correlated oxide phase transition functionality into semiconductor electronic/optoelectronic platforms.