Millimeter-wave-triggering of insulator-to-metal transition in Vanadium dioxide

Abstract

We establish insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) in Vanadium dioxide (VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) by millimeter-wave (mm-wave) actuation, using two coupled dipole antennas: a simple one as a continuous mm-wave-source and the other one with an embedded VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> part as an absorber. We measured |S <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">12</sub> | by a vector network analyzer (VNA), to show how the induced mm-wave power in insulating biased VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> causes IMT. The bias voltage is set to enhance the sensitivity in VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> . The VO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> embedded antenna shows sensitivity to the mm-wave power down to 3.2 pW. The experiment proves the detection concept also for terahertz frequencies.