Metallic Diluted Dimerization in VO ₂ Tweeds

The observation of electronic phase separation textures in vanadium dioxide, a prototypical electron-correlated oxide, has recently added new perspectives on the long standing debate about its metal–insulator transition and applications. Yet, lack atomically resolved information phases accompanying such complex patterns still hinders comprehensive understanding implementation practical devices. In this work, atomic resolution imaging spectroscopy unveils existence ferroelastic tweed structures ?5 nm length scales, well below limit currently used spectroscopic techniques. Moreover, density functional theory calculations show that pretransitional fine-scale tweed, which average looks behaves like standard metallic rutile phase, is fact weaved by semi-dimerized chains monoclinic represents structural bridge to insulating ground state. These observations provide multiscale perspective for interpretation existing data, whereby coexistence intermixing can occur all way down scale.