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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Condensed Matter Physics

William & Mary

2020

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Growth Engineering And Characterization Of Vanadium Dioxide Films For Ultraviolet Detection, Jason Andrew Creeden Jan 2020

Growth Engineering And Characterization Of Vanadium Dioxide Films For Ultraviolet Detection, Jason Andrew Creeden

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

There is a need for efficient ultraviolet (UV) detectors in many fields, such as aerospace, automotive manufacturing, biology, environmental science, and defense, due to photomultiplier tubes (the currently available technology) often not meeting application constraints in weight, robustness, and power consumption. In my thesis, I demonstrate that high quality vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films, epitaxially grown on niobium doped titanium dioxide substrates (TiO2:Nb), display a strong photoconductive response in the UV spectral range, making them promising candidates for photomultiplier-free UV photodetection. By adjusting the characteristics of the substrate and VO2 film, the samples achieve external quantum efficiency exceeding 100% (reaching …


Insulator To Metal Transition Dynamics Of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films, Scott Madaras Jan 2020

Insulator To Metal Transition Dynamics Of Vanadium Dioxide Thin Films, Scott Madaras

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) is a strongly correlated material which has been studied for many decades. VO2 has been proposed for uses in technologies such as optical modulators, IR modulators, optical switches and Mott memory devices. These technologies are taking advantage of VO2’s insulator to metal transition (IMT) and the corresponding changes to the optical and material properties. The insulator to metal transition in VO2 can be accessed by thermal heating, applied electric field, or ultra-fast photo induced processes. Recently, thin films of VO2 grown on Titanium Dioxide doped with Niobium (TiO2:Nb), have shown promise as a possible UV photo detector …


A First-Principles Study Of The Nature Of The Insulating Gap In Vo2, Christopher Hendriks Jan 2020

A First-Principles Study Of The Nature Of The Insulating Gap In Vo2, Christopher Hendriks

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Upon cooling past a critical temperature Tc = 340 K Vanadium dioxide (VO2) exhibits a metal-insulator transition (MIT) from a metallic rutile R to an insulating monoclinic M1 phase. Other insulating phases, a monoclinic M2 and triclinic T, have been identifed and are accessible via strain or doping. Despite decades of research, the nature of the VO2 MIT is still not fully understood. In this work we present ab-initio hybrid density functional theory (DFT) calculations on the insulating phases, compare the results to experimental measurements and discuss their implications on our understanding of the VO2 MIT. Recent measurements on M1 …


Competing And Cooperating Orders In The Three-Band Hubbard Model: A Comprehensive Quantum Monte Carlo And Generalized Hartree-Fock Study, Adam Chiciak Jan 2020

Competing And Cooperating Orders In The Three-Band Hubbard Model: A Comprehensive Quantum Monte Carlo And Generalized Hartree-Fock Study, Adam Chiciak

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Significant progress has been made in studying strongly correlated electronic systems with major focus on understanding high-temperature superconductivity. At the center of these studies are the so-called cuprates, which are characterized by a quasi-2D Copper-Oxide plane in which superconductivity is believed to arise. From the theoretical point of view, the complex electronic structure of these materials makes a fully ab initio many-body computation a formidable task, so we are forced to focus on minimal models that can reproduce the physics, the most well known of which is known as the Hubbard Model, which relies on the Zhang-Rice singet notion to …