Sliding twin-domains in self-heated needle-like VO single crystals.

The prototypical metal-insulator transition in VO at 340 K is from a high-temperature rutile phase to a low-temperature monoclinic phase. The lower symmetry of the monoclinic structure removes the degeneracy of the two equivalent directions of the tetragonal structure, giving rise to twin domains. Since formation of domain walls require energy most needle-like monoclinic single crystal are single-domain.