No Arabic abstract
We report the detailed study of dielectric response of Pr(0.6)Ca(0.4)MnO(3) (PCMO), member of manganite family showing colossal magnetoresistance. Measurements have been performed on four polycrystalline samples and four single crystals, allowing us to compare and extract the essence of dielectric response in the material. High frequency dielectric function is found to be 30, as expected for the perovskite material. Dielectric relaxation is found in frequency window of 20Hz-1MHz at temperatures of 50-200K that yields to colossal low-frequency dielectric function, i.e. static dielectric constant. Static dielectric constant is always colossal, but varies considerably in different samples from 1000 until 100000. The measured data can be simulated very well by blocking (surface barrier) capacitance in series with sample resistance. This indicates that the large dielectric constant in PCMO arises from the Schottky barriers at electrical contacts. Measurements in magnetic field and with d.c. bias support this interpretation. Weak anomaly at the charge ordering temperature can also be attributed to interplay of sample and contact resistance. We comment our results in the framework of related studies by other groups.
We report on DC and pulsed electric field sensitivity of the resistance of mixed valent Mn oxide based La(5/8-y)Pr(y)Ca(3/8)MnO(3) (y = 0.4) single crystals as a function of temperature. The low temperature regime of the resistivity is highly current and voltage dependent. An irreversible transition from high (HR) to a low resistivity (LR) is obtained upon the increase of the electric field up to a temperature dependent critical value (V_c). The current-voltage characteristics in the LR regime as well as the lack of a variation in the magnetization response when V_c is reached indicate the formation of a non-single connected filamentary conducting path. The temperature dependence of V_c indicates the existence of a consolute point where the conducting and insulating phases produce a critical behavior as a consequence of their separation.
We present resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSXS) results from small band width manganites (Pr,Ca)MnO$_3$, which show that the CE-type spin ordering (SO) at the phase boundary is stabilized only below the canted antiferromagnetic transition temperature and enhanced by ferromagnetism in the macroscopically insulating state (FM-I). Our results reveal the fragility of the CE-type ordering that underpins the colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) effect in this system, as well as an unexpected cooperative interplay between FM-I and CE-type SO which is in contrast to the competitive interplay between the ferromagnetic metallic (FM-M) state and CE-type ordering.
We studied the charge-orbital ordering in the superlattice of charge-ordered insulating Pr$_{0.5}$Ca$_{0.5}$MnO$_3$ and ferromagnetic metallic La$_{0.5}$Sr$_{0.5}$MnO$_3$ by resonant soft x-ray diffraction. A temperature-dependent incommensurability is found in the orbital order. In addition, a large hysteresis is observed that is caused by phase competition between insulating charge ordered and metallic ferromagnetic states. No magnetic phase transitions are observed in contrast to bulk, confirming the unique character of the superlattice. The deviation from the commensurate orbital order can be directly related to the decrease of ordered-layer thickness that leads to a decoupling of the orbital-ordered planes along the c axis.
Thin films of strongly-correlated electron materials (SCEM) are often grown epitaxially on planar substrates and typically have anisotropic properties that are usually not captured by edge-mounted four-terminal electrical measurements, which are primarily sensitive to in-plane conduction paths. Accordingly, the correlated interactions in the out-of-plane (perpendicular) direction cannot be measured but only inferred. We address this shortcoming and show here an experimental technique in which the SCEM under study, in our case a 600 Angstrom-thick (La1-yPry)0.67Ca0.33MnO3 (LPCMO) film, serves as the base electrode in a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) trilayer capacitor structure. This unconventional arrangement allows for simultaneous determination of colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) associated with dc transport parallel to the film substrate and colossal magnetocapacitance (CMC) associated with ac transport in the perpendicular direction. We distinguish two distinct strain-related direction-dependent insulator-metal (IM) transitions and use Cole-Cole plots to establish a heretofore unobserved collapse of the dielectric response onto a universal scale-invariant power-law dependence over a large range of frequency, temperature and magnetic field.
We report the characterization of the crystal structure, low-temperature charge and orbital ordering, transport, and magnetization of Pr_{0.6}Ca_{0.4}MnO_{3} films grown on LaAlO_{3}, NdGaO_{3}, and SrTiO_{3} substrates, which provide compressive (LaAlO_{3}) and tensile (NdGaO_{3} and SrTiO_{3}) strain. The films are observed to exhibit different crystallographic symmetries than the bulk material, and the low-temperature ordering is found to be more robust under compressive-- as opposed to tensile-- strain. In fact, bulk-like charge and orbital ordering is not observed in the film grown on NdGaO_{3}, which is the substrate that provides the least amount of nominal and measured, but tensile, strain. This result suggests the importance of the role played by the Mn--O--Mn bond angles in the formation of charge and orbital ordering at low temperatures. Finally, in the film grown on LaAlO_{3}, a connection between the lattice distortion associated with orbital ordering and the onset of antiferromagnetism is reported.