Chemical ordering suppresses large-scale electronic phase separation in doped manganites

• Published in: Nature communications 2016-04, Vol.7 (1), p.11260-11260, Article 11260
• Main Authors: Zhu, Yinyan, Du, Kai, Niu, Jiebin, Lin, Lingfang, Wei, Wengang, Liu, Hao, Lin, Hanxuan, Zhang, Kai, Yang, Tieying, Kou, Yunfang, Shao, Jian, Gao, Xingyu, Xu, Xiaoshan, Wu, Xiaoshan, Dong, Shuai, Yin, Lifeng, Shen, Jian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 142/126; 639/301/119/1003; 639/301/119/2793; 639/301/119/997; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11260

For strongly correlated oxides, it has been a long-standing issue regarding the role of the chemical ordering of the dopants on the physical properties. Here, using unit cell by unit cell superlattice growth technique, we determine the role of chemical ordering of the Pr dopant in a colossal magnetoresistant (La 1− y Pr y ) 1− x Ca x MnO 3 (LPCMO) system, which has been well known for its large length-scale electronic phase separation phenomena. Our experimental results show that the chemical ordering of Pr leads to marked reduction of the length scale of electronic phase separations. Moreover, compared with the conventional Pr-disordered LPCMO system, the Pr-ordered LPCMO system has a metal–insulator transition that is ∼100 K higher because the ferromagnetic metallic phase is more dominant at all temperatures below the Curie temperature. In oxide materials, cation doping strongly influences the electronic correlations which promote diverse phenomena such as colossal magnetoresistance and superconductivity. Here, the authors use magnetic microscopy to image the effects of spatially ordered doping on electronic phase separation in oxide superlattices.