Present study reveals that the free energy landscape of the La5/8-yPryCa3/8MnO3 (LPCMO) system could be modified by elastic strain interaction in the epitaxial thin films. Epitaxial LPCMO thin films of various thicknesses are grown on LaAlO3 substrat
e by pulsed laser deposition. With increasing thickness, by virtue of island growth morphology, strain disorder is invoked in thin films during strain relaxation process. The length-scale of phase separation is found to be highly correlated with strain disorder. Magneto-transport measurements demonstrate that coherent strain stabilizes charge ordered insulating phase while strain disorder stabilizes metallic phase. Resistivity under cooling and heating in unequal field (CHUF) protocol exhibits lower value of freezing temperature for strain disordered films compared to bulk system. Raman spectroscopy reveals that the charge ordered insulating and ferromagnetic metallic phases are structurally dissimilar and possess monoclinic and rhombohedral like symmetries respectively. Interfaces between two phases strongly influence low temperature glassy metastable state resulting in different phase separation states in the LPCMO thin films.
A negative-positive-negative switching behavior of magnetoresistance (MR) with temperature is observed in a ferromagnetic shape memory alloy Ni_1.75Mn_1.25Ga. In the austenitic phase between 300 and 120 K, MR is negative due to s-d scattering. Curiou
sly, below 120K MR is positive, while at still lower temperatures in the martensitic phase, MR is negative again. The positive MR cannot be explained by Lorentz contribution and is related to a magnetic transition. Evidence for this is obtained from ab initio density functional theory, a decrease in magnetization and resistivity upturn at 120 K. Theory shows that a ferrimagnetic state with anti-ferromagnetic alignment between the local magnetic moments of the Mn atoms is the energetically favoured ground state. In the martensitic phase, there are two competing factors that govern the MR behavior: a dominant negative trend up to the saturation field due to the decrease of electron scattering at twin and domain boundaries; and a weaker positive trend due to the ferrimagnetic nature of the magnetic state. MR exhibits a hysteresis between heating and cooling that is related to the first order nature of the martensitic phase transition.
