Phase separation and disorder in half metallic ferromagnetic manganite thin films: A theoretical study looking forward low noise nano-devices

The resistivity of thin La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 films was first investigated in a wide temperature (T) range (10–750 K). Films grown by different techniques and on several substrates enabled to analyze samples with different amounts of disorder. The aim of this work was to elucidate the nature of the metal–insulator (M–I) transition occurring at T = Tp in these films and its relation with the different kinds of inhomogeneities they could present like intrinsic electric disorder and co-existence of two different electrical and/or magnetic phases. The low-temperature resistivity state was described mostly by a law which scales as Tα with α ≈ 2.5. This supports the theoretical proposal of single magnon scattering in presence of minority spin states localized by the disorder. In the whole range of temperatures the experimental data are found to be consistent with a phase separation (PS) scenario. In order to go through the origin of the characteristic length scale of inhomogeneity found, preliminarily low frequency noise measurements as a function of T in a range of temperature around the M–I transition were made. The samples used were patterned using photolithography into bridges with various widths and lengths. No clear sign of separation phase dynamic has been observed in our noise measurements. Unexpectedly the normalized Hooge parameter αH/n was found not to be volume (Ω) independent. The LSMO electrical properties may strongly be driven by disorder and new design for magnetoresistance sensors may have to take into account their intrinsic PS.