Fabrication of polycrystalline La0.67(Sr1-xCdx)0.33MnO3 thin films on Si(100) substrates by sol-gel process

Polycrystalline La-0.67 (Sr1-x Cd (x) )(0.33)MnO3 (LSCMO x = 0, 1/8, 2/8, 3/8, 4/8) films were fabricated on Si(100) single crystal substrates by the sol-gel and the rapid annealing process. According to the field-emission scan electron microscopy (FE-SEM) observation and X-ray (XRD) diffraction studies, all the samples are single phase. We also prepared a series of samples by fixing the ratio of La at 0.67. It is shown that with increase of the doping amount x in La-0.67(Sr1-x Cd (x) )(0.33)MnO3, the average A-site cation radius < A > decreases, the temperature of metal-insulator transition (T-MI) decreases monotonically, rho and magnetoresistance (MR) values increase dramatically, which can be explained by the lattice effects. The enhanced MR effect at low temperature for the LSCMO film is attributed to the suppression of the spin dependent scattering of polarized electrons at the grain boundaries. The low-field magnetoresistance values under 0.3 T are observed to be 2.48% (x = 0) at 300 K and 37.5% (x = 4/8) at 85 K, respectively.