The objective of this educational module is to measure the heat capacity of vanadium dioxide (VO2), a material that exhibits a structural phase transition at 340K that coincides with a transition from a low-temperature monoclinic insulating phase to a high temperature rutile metallic phase. VO2 is a well-known correlated electron material that is being actively investigated to elucidate the relative importance of structural changes versus electronic correlations as the fundamental cause of the transition. The insulator-to-metal transition in VO2 is first order resulting in a large latent heat, which can be measured using the heat capacity option of the VersaLab.
Several items are needed for this experiment, which include:
