Atmospheric vapor-transport method for growth of VO2 single-crystalline nano- and microwires

Abstract

The growth of high-quality single crystalline nano- and microwires of VO 2 is necessary to study the Mott transition and to expand its applications. Here, we propose a modified vapor-transport method characterized by a one-step process that does not require a vacuum and can be performed at the atmospheric pressure conditions with a nitrogen gas flow. This, so called atmospheric vapor-transport (AVT) method, is simpler in terms of the growth procedure and the apparatus installation when compared to the widely used vacuum-based techniques. The crystalline wires obtained by AVT method show a sharp and large, up to five orders, change in the electrical resistance near T C \xa0≈\xa0340\xa0K, along with the M1–M2–R structural phase transition.