News Physics

Vanadium dioxide’s weird phase transition just got weirder

As the material switches from insulator to conductor, its atoms move chaotically

vanadium atoms

JUMBLED UP  When hit with laser light, vanadium atoms (blue in this illustration) and oxygen atoms (red) in vanadium dioxide reorganize into a new crystal structure. The atoms’ movements during this change are much more disorderly than expected.

Delaire group/Duke University

By Maria Temming

- More than 2 years ago

For the first time, researchers have gotten a detailed view of how atoms in a compound called vanadium dioxide move when an ultrafast laser pulse transforms the material from an electrical insulator to a conductor — and it’s nothing like scientists expected.