Suppression of Metal-Insulator Transition in VO2 by Electric Field-Induced Oxygen Vacancy Formation

Mind the Vacancies Varying the carrier density of solid-state systems to manipulate their electrical properties usually involves chemical doping, which can lead to disorder. Recently, ionic liquids have been used to form an electronic double layer on the surface of a material, tuning its carrier density by the application of an electric field. Jeong et al. (p. 1402 ) used liquid gating on VO 2 , which undergoes a metal-insulator transition close to room temperature. The liquid gating suppressed the transition to lower and lower temperatures; however, the material remained in the metallic state, even when the gating fluid was washed off. It appears that, instead of a simple electrostatic effect, the properties of VO 2 are modulated by the introduction of oxygen vacancies, an electrochemical consequence of high electric fields. The results imply that careful interpretation of liquid gating experiments in condensed matter physics is needed.