High-temperature thermopower is interpreted as entropy that a carrier carries. Owing to spin and orbital degrees of freedom, a transition metal perovskite exhibits large thermopower at high temperatures. In this paper, we revisit the high-temperature
thermopower in the perovskites to shed light on the degrees of freedom. Thus, we theoretically derive an expression of thermopower in one-dimensional octahedral-MX6-clusters chain using linear-response theory and electronic structure calculation of the chain based on the tight-binding approximation. The derived expression of the thermopower is consistent with the extended Heikes formula and well reproduced experimental data of several perovskite oxides at high temperatures. In this expression, a degeneracy of many electron states in octahedral ligand field (which is characterized by multiplet term) appears instead of the spin and orbital degeneracies. Complementarity in between our expression and the extended Heikes formula is discussed.
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction patterns were measured and analyzed for a polycrystalline sample of the room-temperature ferromagnet Sr3.12Er0.88Co4O10.5 from 300 to 650 K, from which two structural phase transitions were found to occur successively. T
he higher-temperature transition at 509 K is driven by ordering of the oxygen vacancies, which is closely related to the metallic state at high temperatures. The lower-temperature transition at 360 K is of first order, at which the ferromagnetic state suddenly appears with exhibiting a jump in magnetization and resistivity. Based on the refined structure, possible spin and orbital models for the magnetic order are proposed.
