The effect of grain size on electrical transport and magnetic properties of La0.9Te0.1MnO3

The effect of grain size on structural, magnetic and transport properties in electron-doped manganites La_0.9Te_0.1MnO₃ has been investigated. All samples show a rhombohedral structure with the space group at room temperature. The Mn-O-Mn bond angle decreases and the Mn-O bond length increases with the increase of grain size. All samples undergo paramagnetic (PM)-ferromagnetic (FM) phase transitions and the interesting phenomenon that both magnetization and the Curie temperature T_C decrease with increasing grain size is observed, which is suggested to mainly originate from the increase of the Mn-O bond length d_Mn-O. Additionally, ρ obviously increases with decreasing grain size due to the increase of both the height and width of tunneling barriers with decreasing grain size. The results indicate that both the intrinsic colossal magnetoresistance and the extrinsic interfacial magnetoresistance can be effectively tuned in La_0.9Te_0.1MnO₃ by changing grain size.