Temperature and electric field effects in strongly correlated nanoscale systems

Although metal-insulator transitions (MIT) and charge density wave (CDW) behaviors have been known phenomena for several decades, they remain actively studied among the solid state research community due to their exclusive electronic properties. Moreover, studies on such systems in the nanoscale regime are not only paramount for understanding these properties on a microscopic level, but new phenomena may emerge from effects of one- or of two-dimensional confinement. Herein, by tuning temperature and electric field, electric transport properties in nanoscale systems of vanadium oxide and in nanoribbons of the CDW conductor NbSe3 are investigated. Specifically, this work provides new insight into long standing questions about the mechanisms driving the MIT in VO 2 from electric field measurements which involve charge carrier excitation and the modulation of charge carrier density. Furthermore, unprecedented features of the MIT in nanoscale MxV2 O5, and enhanced depinning phenomena of the CDW state in nanoribbons of NbSe3 are manifested; their physical significances are discussed.