Colossal magnetoresistant materials: the key role of phase separation

The study of the manganese oxides, widely known as manganites, that exhibit the “colossal” magnetoresistance effect is among the main areas of research within the area of strongly correlated electrons. After considerable theoretical effort in recent years, mainly guided by computational and mean-field studies of realistic models, considerable progress has been achieved in understanding the curious properties of these compounds. These recent studies suggest that the ground states of manganite models tend to be intrinsically inhomogeneous due to the presence of strong tendencies toward phase separation, typically involving ferromagnetic metallic and antiferromagnetic charge and orbital ordered insulating domains. Calculations of the resistivity versus temperature using mixed states lead to a good agreement with experiments. The mixed-phase tendencies have two origins: (i) electronic phase separation between phases with different densities that lead to nanometer scale coexisting clusters, and (ii) disorder-induced phase separation with percolative characteristics between equal-density phases, driven by disorder near first-order metal-insulator transitions. The coexisting clusters in the latter can be as large as a micrometer in size. It is argued that a large variety of experiments reviewed in detail here contain results compatible with the theoretical predictions. The main phenomenology of mixed-phase states appears to be independent of the fine details of the model employed, since the microscopic origin of the competing phases does not influence the results at the phenomenological level. However, it is quite important to clarify the electronic properties of the various manganite phases based on microscopic Hamiltonians, including strong electron-phonon Jahn-Teller and/or Coulomb interactions. Thus, several issues are discussed here from the microscopic viewpoint as well, including the phase diagrams of manganite models, the stabilization of the charge/orbital/spin ordered half-doped correlated electronics (CE)-states, the importance of the naively small Heisenberg coupling among localized spins, the setup of accurate mean-field approximations, the existence of a new temperature scale T ^∗ where clusters start forming above the Curie temperature, the presence of stripes in the system, and many others. However, much work remains to be carried out, and a list of open questions is included here. It is also argued that the mixed-phase phenomenology of manganites may appear in a large variety of compounds as well, including ruthenates, diluted magnetic semiconductors, and others. It is concluded that manganites reveal such a wide variety of interesting physical phenomena that their detailed study is quite important for progress in the field of correlated electrons.