17O NMR study of the doped electrons in lightly oxygen-deficient cubic SrMnO3 -x
Abstract
The spin susceptibility of the localized Mn (t2 g) electrons, χs, and the spatially distributed spin density of the doped electrons were investigated by 17O nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in the paramagnetic (PM) and antiferromagnetic (AF) phases of electron-doped SrMnO3 -x ceramics with the cubic structure. Three lightly doped samples (2 x <0.015 ) were studied with TN=220 K-240 K. In the PM state χs increases gradually from TN and reaches a broad maximum above ∼1.5 TN . The gapped behavior of χs indicates a low-dimensional short-range spin order persisting above TN. These short-range one-dimensional correlations are consistent with 17O NMR results obtained at room temperature, which show that Mn magnetic moments are aligned along the edges of the cubic unit cell. Above 350 K all doped electrons are fast-moving eg electrons. They provide the uniform polarization of the localized spins which increases χs and the increasing doping shifts the oxygen-deficient SrMnO3 -x oxide towards a ferromagnetic (FM) metallic state. At lower T the doped electrons are heterogeneously distributed in the oxide: The fraction of the fast-moving electrons diminishes and vanishes below 100 K, while the remaining doped electrons slow down their hopping and each of them creates a FM domain. These FM domains which are detected below 10 K by 55Mn NMR can be considered as small-size magnetic polarons. Their T -activated hopping in the G-type AF lattice was probed by 17O spin-echo experiments. The energy barrier of hopping shows a trend to grow with increasing doping, indicating that the de Gennes metallic ground state cannot be achieved in oxygen-deficient SrMnO3 -x oxides, probably due to detrimental oxygen vacancy defects.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review B
- Pub Date:
- May 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevB.93.174413
- Bibcode:
- 2016PhRvB..93q4413T