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PHYS07200604007 Manas Kumar Dala - Homi Bhabha National ...

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manganites. This mixed valence manganites have been studied for more than five<br />

decades but are still considered modern materials because of their wide potential for<br />

technological application.<br />

Experimental electronic structure studies [15, 16, 17, 18] on these materials have<br />

contributed substantially to the understanding of their unusual behavior which could<br />

not be fully accomodated within the framework of the DE model. The temperature<br />

and doping dependent metal-insulator transitions in these materials are found to be<br />

closely related to the unique electronic structure derived from the Mn 3d and O 2p<br />

hybridized orbitals. Most of their electrical and magnetic properties originate from<br />

the Jahn-Teller distortion in the MnO 6 octahedra around the Mn 3+ ions. The strong<br />

interplay between spin and orbital ordering originating from the single occupancy of<br />

the doubly degenerate e g orbitals of Mn 3+ (t 3 2ge 1 g) ions make the phase diagram of these<br />

compounds rich with physics. Many of these compounds, for example L 1−x Ca x MnO 3<br />

(L = La, Pr) show strong charge and/or orbital ordered (CO/OO) insulating nature<br />

at low temperatures, especially when x equals commensurate value.<br />

Electron spectroscopy is a very powerful experimental tool for probing the electronic<br />

structure of these materials. For this thesis work, the electronic structure of<br />

Pr 1−x Ca x MnO 3 series have been investigated using ultra-violet photoelectron spectroscopy<br />

(UPS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Inverse photoemission spectroscopy<br />

(IPES) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Pr 1−x Ca x MnO 3 is one of<br />

the interesting among these materials due to their insulating phase at all temperatures<br />

and great variety of ordered phases, that are very sensitive to the cation/anion<br />

doping. For 0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.8, a charge ordering of Mn 3+ and Mn 4+ was found and an<br />

antiferromagnetic (AF) ordering can be observed with neel temperature ranging from<br />

100 to 170 K. For x ≤ 0.25, a ferromagnetic insulating state (FMI) is observed and<br />

with no CO, whatever the temperature. In this region the metallic state is never realized<br />

even upon the application of magnetic field. But the charge ordered insulating<br />

state can be melted into ferromagnetic metallic state (FMM) upon application of a<br />

magnetic field [4]. Interestingly the x = 0.33 doping shows the coexistence of FM and<br />

AFM phases. Around x = 0.9 a metallic cluster glass domain [19] has been observed.<br />

Using valence band photoemission and O K edge x-ray absorption, we studied<br />

the temperature dependent finer changes in the near E F electronic structure of<br />

Pr 0.67 Ca 0.33 MnO 3 , which is regarded as a prototype for the electronic phase separation<br />

models in CMR systems. With decrease in temperature the O 2p contributions<br />

x

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