Figure 3: Temperature evolution of insulating domains across the MIT.
From: Striped nanoscale phase separation at the metal–insulator transition of heteroepitaxial nickelates
(a) During each thermal cycle the insulating domains nucleate and grow on cooling, while they gradually disappear on warming (see video in the Supplementary Material). The inner panel shows the percentage of image area covered by the insulating domains as a function of temperature, highlighting the hysteretic behaviour of the MIT with a finite width down to the single domain. Scale bar, 1 μm. (b) Perpendicular and (c) parallel linecuts of the two-dimensional Fourier transform with respect to the insulating domain orientation (indicated by the black arrows) as a function of temperature. The colour scale represents the power spectrum normalized with respect to the maximum value at T=140 K and k=0. The dashed ellipse evidences the asymmetry between the cooling and warming directions.
