Recent advances in multi-field manipulations of the metal–insulator transition in correlated vanadium oxides enabling interdisciplinary applications

Abstract

The metal–insulator transition (MIT) in vanadium oxides leads to abrupt variations in their correlated physical functionalities, emerging as a new paradigm that enriches their multidisciplinary applications in correlated electronics, energy conversion and spintronics. Beyond the conventional thermally-driven MIT, the highly tunable electronic orbital configuration of VO₂ enables the regulation of its MIT behavior using multiple external fields, which extensively expands the exploration of new quantum states and exotic physical functionalities. This review delivers a systematic and in-depth picture of the MIT properties in vanadium oxides, covering the MIT mechanism, multi-field regulation, interdisciplinary applications and beyond. In particular, adjusting the interplay among the instabilities in the charge, spin, lattice and orbital degrees of freedom using external fields holds great promise for discovering new electronic phases arising from the non-equilibrium states within the phase diagram of vanadium oxides. Beyond that, a broader vision is presented regarding the cutting-edge research fields of the interdisciplinary applications of VO₂ and the underlying mechanism driving these phase transitions via multiple fields. Based on this crucial overview of future prospects, this review aims to provide fundamentally new insights into the metal–insulator transitions in vanadium oxides, advancing next-generation electronic device applications.