Variability of electrical resistivity in epitaxial grown La0.5Ba0.5MnO3 patterned micro-wires

We investigated the mesoscopic electrical transport properties of micro-patterned perovskite manganite (La0.5Ba0.5MnO3; LBMO) films that show electronic phase separation between ferromagnetic and A-type antiferromagnetic phases. The patterned-wire LBMO film of 10 mu m width showed an insulator metal (IM) transition associated with a ferromagnetic transition, followed by re-emergence of insulator characteristics below 200 k that did not appear in the wide wire film. Through continuous multiple measurements of rho-T curve, we observed the variability of temperature dependent resistivity behaviour. The metal-insulator transition temperature was very scattered every measurements, indicating the probing randomly emerging antiferromagnetic micro-domains in the patterned narrow wire with a small channel.