Dense Electron System from Gate-Controlled Surface Metal–Insulator Transition

Two-dimensional electron systems offer enormous opportunities for science discoveries and technological innovations. Here we report a dense electron system on the surface of single-crystal vanadium dioxide nanobeam via electrolyte gating. The overall conductance of the nanobeam increases by nearly 100 times at a gate voltage of 3 V. A series of experiments were carried out which rule out electrochemical reaction, impurity doping, and oxygen vacancy diffusion as the dominant mechanism for the conductance modulation. A surface insulator-to-metal transition is electrostatically triggered, thereby collapsing the bandgap and unleashing an extremely high density of free electrons from the original valence band within a depth self-limited by the energetics of the system. The dense surface electron system can be reversibly tuned by the gating electric field, which provides direct evidence of the electron correlation driving mechanism of the phase transition in VO(2). It also offers a new material platform for implementing Mott transistor and novel sensors and investigating low-dimensional correlated electron behavior.