Surface chemical-modification of inorganic solids for engineering the phase transitions and smart applications

Abstract

The electron-electron correlation in low-dimensional inorganic solid materials leads to many novel phase transition behaviors, such as metal-insulator transition, superconductivity, charge density wave and giant magnetoresistance effect, etc. Adjusting parameters by external fields can change the equilibrium relationship between ordered phases, realize the phase transition between different competing phases, and induce new physical properties and even new quantum critical phenomena. These phase-transition materials have great potential to be used in advanced electronic components and smart response devices in the future. It is known that low-dimensional inorganic phase-transition solids have large specific surface area and electronic correlation effects. Surface chemical modification opens up a new research space for the regulation of their phase transitions and complex interactions, which is not only helpful to explore physical laws and new quantum orders of low-dimensional correlated electron systems, but also of great significance to understand the microscopic origin of these complex physical phenomena. In this review, we focus on a series of recent advances about the regulation of phase transitions of low-dimensional inorganic solids by surface chemical modification strategies, and investigate their smart response to external light and magnetism under the limited dimension.