Unravelling the nature of ferromagnetic- paramagnetic phase transition and its bearing on colossal magnetoresistance in nanocrystalline La1-xCaxMnO3 (0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.4)

The nature of the ferromagnetic (FM)-paramagnetic (PM) phase transition at T = T-C changes from first order to second order when the average crystallite size, d, falls below 100nm in optimally hole-doped nanocrystalline La1-xCaxMnO3. In zero field, the systems with d < 100 nm behave as a three-dimensional (3D) uniaxial dipolar ferromagnet in the asymptotic critical region but in finite fields, the asymptotic critical behavior changes over to that of a 3D Ising ferromagnet. How effectively polaron correlations couple magnetic degrees of freedom to the lattice decides the order of the FM-PM transition and the magnitude of colossal magnetoresistance (CMR). d alters the electron-lattice coupling and thereby enables the tuning of CMR over an unusually wide temperature range. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2013