A schematic of the crystal structures in VO2, showing the motion of the vanadium (black arrows) with respect to the oxygen ions across the metal-insulator transition. VO2 acts like an insulator at low temperatures but like a metal at near room temperature. Graphene may command the lion’s share of attention but it is not the only material generating buzz in the electronics world. Vanadium dioxide is one of the few known materials that acts like an insulator at low temperatures but like a metal at warmer temperatures starting around 67 degrees Celsius. This temperature-driven metal-insulator transition, the origin of which is still intensely debated, in principle can be induced by the application of an external electric field. That could yield faster and much more energy efficient electronic devices. “If the origin of this metal-insulator transition is electronic, the application of an electric field should trigger the transition on a picosecond or faster time-scale,” says Nagaphani Aetukuri at the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps). “This would be the basis for an ultrafast electronic switch, in which devices would be activated so quickly that very little energy would be lost through dissipation.” To determine the origin of the metal-insulator transition

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