Correlation of microstructure with magnetic properties in Pr 0.67 Sr 0.33 MnO 3 thin films
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Correlation of microstructure with magnetic properties in Pr0.67Sr0.33MnO3 thin films Bangmin Zhang1,* 1
School of Physics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Received: 20 August 2020
ABSTRACT
Accepted: 16 September 2020
Strain can be used to modulate magnetic properties of manganite thin film by affecting not only its crystal structure but also the microstructure, including the cluster size and fraction of ferromagnetic phase. In this work, epitaxial Pr0.67Sr0.33MnO3 thin films deposited on (001)-SrTiO3 single-crystal substrate are studied. The magnetization-temperature curves with zero-field cooling and field cooling show the typical feature of cluster-glass system. With the increase of film thickness, strain relaxation occurs in 80 nm Pr0.67Sr0.33MnO3 film with a wide temperature range of phase transition. By fitting the freezing temperature Tf dependence on magnetic field according to Almeida–Thouless equation, the 80 nm film has a larger local anisotropy and exchange bias compared to that of the 15 nm Pr0.67Sr0.33MnO3 film. Detailed analysis suggests that the strain-induced phase fraction and size distribution of ferromagnetic phase are responsible for the different magnetic properties of Pr0.67Sr0.33MnO3 film with different thickness.
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Springer Science+Business
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1 Introduction Manganite with perovskite structure Ln1-xAxMnO3 (Ln is a lanthanide and A is an alkaline earth) belongs to the class of strong correlated electron systems, where the orbital, spin, charge, and structural degrees of freedom couple with each other, resulting in many interesting and complicated physical phenomena [1, 2]. The parent compounds in these classes of materials are antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulators (x = 0 or 1), and the physical properties evolve as a function of hole doping (x). Two parent components (x = 0 and 1) both are antiferromagnetic insulator, and with the increase of the doping concentration [1],
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-020-04510-4
it changes into ferromagnetic metallic phase with colossal magnetoresistance effect around 0.2 \ x \ 0.5. In addition, due to the difference of ionic size, the crystal structure also evolves with the increase of doping concentration. One phenomenon with the hole x doping is the inhomogeneous coexistence of insulating AFM state with a structurally distinct ferromagnetic (FM) metallic phase in a phase-separated ground state [3]. An interesting property in such inhomogeneous materials is the formation of the spin-glass-like behavior which has attracted much attention. Due to the competition between the FM and AFM interactions and the randomness of the distortion [4], the spin frustration occurs at low
J Mater Sci: Mater Electron
temperature, which promotes the appearance of the spin-glass. Cox et al. and Radaelli et al. have suggested that microscopically inhomogeneous state develops with non-metallic FM clusters with an associated lattice distortion from the a
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