Phase separation as origin of the magnetic anomalies in La0.85Sr0.15CoO3

The dependence of the ac-magnetic susceptibility of La0.85Sr0.15CoO3 on the annealing temperature used during synthesis is addressed. Such dependence has been previously attributed to compositional inhomogeneities. Nevertheless, the presence of distinct phases with different chemical compositions is excluded after explorations by several techniques. Instead it is proposed that an electronic phase separation takes place in the material, whose state is changed after charge-carrier redistributions due to the thermal history of the samples, analogously to parent manganese-based perovskites. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.