One class of materials we are particularly interested in are the vanadium oxides, a rich and diverse family of compounds with several applications. Bulk rutile VO2 undergoes a well-documented transition from a metal to an insulator below temperatures of 340 K. Accompanying this transition is a structural transformation from the high temperature tetragonal to the low temperature monoclinic phase.
The image on the left shows a thermodiffractogram of the a rutile VO2 sample upon heating from 303 K to 393 K in increments of 5 K; note a slight shift in the XRD peaks with increasing temperature. The bottom panel shows the monoclinic-to-tetragonal phase transition in VO2, monitored using changes in the refined tetragonal unit-cell volume, as a function of increasing temperature.
Selected publications
Bai, Li, Corr, Pravica, Chen, Zhao, Sinogeikin, Meng, Park, Shen, Phys. Rev. B, 2015, 92, 134106. DOI
Bai, Li, Corr, Meng, Park, Sinogeikin, Wu, Shen, Phys. Rev. B, 2015, 91, 104110. DOI
Corr, Shoemaker, Toberer, Seshadri, J. Mater. Chem., 2010, 20, 1413.
Corr, Grossman, Shi, Heier, Stucky, Seshadri, J. Mater. Chem., 2009, 25, 4362.
Cussen group | Energy Materials Research at Sheffield 