Effects of interaction and disorder on polarons in colossal resistance manganite Pr0.68Ca0.32MnO3 thin films

The colossal magnetoresistance effect (CMR), the drop of the electric resistance by orders of magnitude in a strong magnetic field, is a fascinating property of strongly correlated electrons in doped manganites. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the magnetotransport properties of small polarons in thin films of the low bandwidth manganite Pr0.68Ca0.32MnO3 with different degrees of preparation-induced octahedral disorder. The crystal and defect structure is investigated by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. We apply the small polaron theory developed by Firsov and Lang in order to study the hopping mobility in the paramagnetic phase and its changes due to the formation of the antiferromagnetic charge ordered (CO) and the ferromagnetic metallic phases. Although it represents a single particle theory, reasonable estimates of small polaron properties such as formation energy, activation energy and transfer integral are possible, if the effects of interactions and disorder are taken into account. Beyond the well-known effect of the magnetic double exchange on the transfer integral, we show that the emergence of band transport of small polarons in the CMR transition sensibly depends on the degree of octahedral disorder, the polaron–polaron interactions and the resulting long range order leading to a structural phase transition in the CO phase.