Nanoscale manipulation of the Mott insulating state coupled to charge order in 1T-TaS2.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26795073.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms10453 and PMC identifier 4735893.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The controllability over strongly correlated electronic states promises unique electronic devices. A recent example is an optically induced ultrafast switching device based on the transition between the correlated Mott insulating state and a metallic state of a transition metal dichalcogenide 1T-TaS2. However, the electronic switching has been challenging and the nature of the transition has been veiled. Here we demonstrate the nanoscale electronic manipulation of the Mott state of 1T-TaS2. The voltage pulse from a scanning tunnelling microscope switches the insulating phase locally into a metallic phase with irregularly textured domain walls in the charge density wave order inherent to this Mott state. The metallic state is revealed as a correlated phase, which is induced by the moderate reduction of electron correlation due to the charge density wave decoherence.