Infrared studies under pressure at the infrared beamline SISSI at ELETTRA

Abstract

Transition metal oxides often display insulator to metal transitions (MIT) with conductivity jumps up to several orders of magnitude, which makes them very attractive both for technological applications and for the several fundamental issues they raise. Information about the mechanism inducing the MIT may be gained by means of infrared (IR) spectroscopy. We present here the capabilities of the IR synchrotron source SISSI (Synchrotron Infrared Source for Spectroscopy and Imaging), at the Italian storage ring ELETTRA. We demonstrate SISSI to be a powerful source for optical studies of pressure-induced insulator-to-metal transitions, reporting on V₃O₅ and (V_0.989Cr_0.011)₂O₃ as examples.

Keywords:

• infrared beamline
• metal to insulator transitions

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank E. Arcangeletti, P. Calvani, L. Degiorgi, D. Di Castro, M. Kiskinova, M. Lavagnini, C. Marini, M. Marsi, P. Metcalf, D. Nicoletti, A. Sacchetti, V.I. Sidorov, and L. Vaccari.