Highly sensitive X-ray scattering shows why an exotic material is sometimes a metal, sometimes an insulator
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - 07:31
in Physics & Chemistry
Some materials hold surprising – and possibly useful – properties: neodymium nickel oxide is either a metal or an insulator, depending on its temperature. This characteristic makes the material a potential candidate for transistors in modern electronic devices. To understand how neodymium nickel oxide makes the transition from metal to insulator, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University of Geneva UNIGE have precisely probed the distribution of electrons in the material. By means of a sophisticated development of X-ray scattering, they were able to show that electrons in the vicinity of the material's oxygen atoms are rearranging. The researchers have now published their study in the journal Nature Communications.