  Many strongly correlated electronic materials, including high-temperature
superconductors, colossal magnetoresistance and metal-insulator-transition
(MIT) materials, are inhomogeneous on a microscopic scale as a result of domain
structure or compositional variations. An important potential advantage of
nanoscale samples is that they exhibit the homogeneous properties, which can
differ greatly from those of the bulk. We demonstrate this principle using
vanadium dioxide, which has domain structure associated with its dramatic MIT
at 68 degrees C. Our studies of single-domain vanadium dioxide nanobeams reveal
new aspects of this famous MIT, including supercooling of the metallic phase by
50 degrees C; an activation energy in the insulating phase consistent with the
optical gap; and a connection between the transition and the equilibrium
carrier density in the insulating phase. Our devices also provide a
nanomechanical method of determining the transition temperature, enable
measurements on individual metal-insulator interphase walls, and allow general
investigations of a phase transition in quasi-one-dimensional geometry.
