Unveiling the critical role of interfacial strain in adjusting electronic phase transitions in correlated vanadium dioxide

Abstract: Thermally activated abrupt switching between localized and itinerant electronic states during the insulator-metal transition (IMT) in correlated oxide systems serves as a powerful platform for exploring exotic physical phenomena and device functionality. One ongoing focal challenge lies in the realization of the broadly tunable IMT property in correlated system, to satisfy the demands of practical applications across diverse environments. Here, we unveil the overwhelming advantage associated with interfacial strain in bridging the bandwidth and band-filling control over the IMT property of VO2. Tailoring the orbital overlapping through strain-mediated bandwidth control enables a widely tunable thermally-driven IMT property in VO2. Benefiting from adjustable defect dynamics, filling-controlled Mott phase modulations from electron-localized t2g1eg0 state to electron-itinerant t2g1+{\Delta}eg0 state through oxygen vacancies can be facilitated by using in-plane tensile distortion, overcoming the high-speed bottlenecks in iontronic devices. Defect-engineered electronic phase transitions are primarily governed by the electron filling in t2g band of VO2, showcasing a definitive relationship with the incorporated defect concentration. Our findings provide fundamentally new insights into the on-demand design of emergent electronic states and transformative functionalities in correlated oxide system by unifying two fundamental control paradigms of bandwidth and band-filling control.