Millimeter-wave-triggering of insulator-to-metal transition in Vanadium dioxide

We establish insulator-to-metal transition (IMT) in Vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) by millimeter-wave (mm-wave) actuation, using two coupled dipole antennas: a simple one as a continuous mm-wave-source and the other one with an embedded VO 2 part as an absorber. We measured |S 12 | by a vector network analyzer (VNA), to show how the induced mm-wave power in insulating biased VO 2 causes IMT. The bias voltage is set to enhance the sensitivity in VO 2 . The VO 2 embedded antenna shows sensitivity to the mm-wave power down to 3.2 pW. The experiment proves the detection concept also for terahertz frequencies.