Two conductive mechanisms in LaMnO3 thin film: Adiabatic and nonadiabatic small polaronic hopping

Abstract

We have presented the structural, surface morphology, magnetic and resistivity data for perovskite LaMnO3 epitaxial thin films which are fabricated on well-oriented (001) LaAlO3 substrates by pulsed laser deposition technique. X-ray diffraction [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] linear scans and reciprocal space mapping measurement confirm that the out-of-plane and in-plane epitaxial relationship are LMO(001)/LAO(001) and LMO(110)/LAO(110), respectively. Surface roughness determined by atomic force microscopy was no more than 0.3 nm. In the whole studied temperature range, all films only show a paramagnetic behavior instead of any magnetic phase transitions. Correspondingly, the electron transport behaviors always exhibit an insulting state as the temperature changes from high to low. However, we find that none of theoretical models can individually be used to understand their conductive mechanisms. Further studies indicated that charge carries of high and low temperature region obey adiabatic and nonadiabatic small polaronic hopping mechanisms, respectively. This finding offers new ways of exploiting the abnormal ferromagnetism in LaMnO3 multilayer thin films.