Two insulating phases in compressed Pr1-xCaxMnO3 thin films
arXiv:0809.2184 · doi:10.1063/1.2993347
Abstract
The temperature dependent resistivity of two Pr1-xCaxMnO3 (x=0.5 and 0.4) thin films grown on LaAlO3 has been studied as a function of hydrostatic pressure (up to 2.5 GPa) and magnetic field (up to 9T). Both samples show a monotonic decrease in the resistivity with an increase in pressure, corresponding to a change of -35% at 2.5 GPa. No pressure induced metal-to-insulator transition was observed in the temperature-dependent resistivity. The non-trivial interaction between high pressure and magnetic field reveals that the effect of pressure cannot be simply rescaled to that of a specific field, as has been reported for the corresponding bulk material. We propose an interpretation of the data based on phase separation, where two different insulating phases coexist: the charge ordered phase, which is sensitive to both magnetic field and pressure, and a second insulating phase that can be tuned by magnetic field. Such a result demonstrates that phase separation can be manipulated in thin films by independent application of magnetic field and/or external pressure.
9 pages, 3 figuresn submitted to Applied Physics Letters
References in corpus (8)
- Colossal Magnetoresistant Materials: The Key Role of Phase Separation
- Field-angle Dependence of the Zero-Energy Density of States in the Unconventional Heavy-Fermion Superconductor CeCoIn5
- Noise Probe of the Dynamic Phase Separation in La2/3Ca1/3MnO3
- Spectacular decrease of the melting magnetic field in the charge-ordered state of tensile Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 films
- Thickness dependence of the stability of the charge-ordered state in PrCaMnO thin films
- Pressure effects on charge, spin, and metal-insulator transitions in narrow bandwidth manganite PrCaMnO
- Effects of Pressure on Electron Transport and Local Structure of Manganites: Low to High Pressure Regime
- Magnetic properties of the insulating ferromagnetic phase in strained Pr_0.6Ca_0.4MnO_3 thin films