Exploring electrically driven CDW phase transitions in 1T-TaS2 using thermal imaging

https://technion.zoom.us/j/92337019847?pwd=OE5ubWp1KzR5RitWN1NISWhzeHJQZz09

Electrically induced charge-density-wave phase transition in 1T-TaS2 near room temperature has various applications including broadband photodetectors. However, the physical mechanism behind the electrically induced phase transition is still not clear due to lack of direct temperature measurements during the transition. To shed light into this problem, we directly imaged the spatially resolved temperature of a 1T-TaS2 device by IR thermal microscopy. Combining this method with pulsed electrical transport measurements, Raman spectroscopy, and a simple resistor network model we showed that the transition is a result of Joule-heating. More broadly we showed that thermal imaging is important to determine the power dissipation in electronic devices, due to the inhomogeneous nature of the temperature distribution. This study was recently accepted as an editor pick paper in applied physics letters journal. In my talk I will describe our study, explain its different parts, and discuss our conclusion limitations and open questions.