Growth of vanadium dioxide thin films on hexagonal boron nitride flakes as transferrable substrates.

Vanadium dioxide (VO) is an archetypal metal-insulator transition (MIT) material, which has been known for decades to show an orders-of-magnitude change in resistivity across the critical temperature of approximately 340 K. In recent years, VO has attracted increasing interest for electronic and photonic applications, along with advancement in thin film growth techniques. Previously, thin films of VO were commonly grown on rigid substrates such as crystalline oxides and bulk semiconductors, but the use of transferrable materials as the growth substrates can provide versatility in applications, including transparent and flexible devices.