Materials Chemistry and Physics, Vol.114, No.2-3, 676-680, 2009
Structure and properties of electron-doped Ca1-xSmxMnO3 nanoparticles
In this paper, we report the structural and magnetic properties of electron-doped Ca1-xSmxMnO3 (CSM) nanoparticles. The samarium's composition 'x' was varied from 0 to 0.2 with the special attention up to 0.05. Spherical 60-70 nm polycrystalline CSM nanoparticles were synthesised by chemical co-precipitation technique. Doping of SM3+ in antiferromagnetic CaMnO3 has drastically altered its magnetic behavior due to the formation of ferromagnetic clusters. For example, the CSM powder with x = 0.04 displays about 115 K magnetic Curie temperature and about 0.1 emu/mole saturation magnetization. Physical properties of our nano-CSM powders are also compared with identical bulk-samples. To understand the differences, we invoked the intra-grain and inter-grain magnetic coupling process that facilitates to enhance their ferromagnetic behaviors. Unlike the bulk samples, such magnetic couplings in nanoparticles are favored by the presence of low-level crystal and interfacial defects. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.