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 (V0.989Cr0.011)2O3 as examples.
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.