Crystal Structure, Magnetic and Electrical Properties of Half-Doped Chromium Manganite La{sub 0.5}Sr{sub 0.5}Mn{sub 0.5}Cr{sub 0.5}O{sub 3}
Polycrystalline sample La{sub 0.5}Sr{sub 0.5}Mn{sub 0.5}Cr{sub 0.5}O{sub 3} (LSMCO) was prepared by a conventional solid-state reaction method in the air, and its structure was determined by Rietveld refinement using consistent resolution time-of-flight X-ray diffraction. Different structural models have been used for analysis of X-ray diffraction data recorded at room temperature, but the best fits have been found using a mixture of rhombohedral and an orthorhombic structural phases (42(1)%/57(1)%). The rhombohedral, centro-symmetric space group R 3-bar c(No.167,a≈√2a{sub p},c≈2√3a{sub p},Z=6) with octahedral tilting scheme a{sup −}a{sup −}a{sup −} leading to a three identical out-of-phase tilt angle of (Mn/Cr)-O{sub 6} octahedron along three perovskite main directions: x, y, and z-axes. The orthorhombic space group Pbnm(No.62,a≈b≈√2a{sub p},c≈2a{sub p},Z=4) with octahedral tilting scheme a{sup −}a{sup −}c{sup +}, leads to an anti-phase tilts of the same magnitude about [100] and [010] directions of the elementary specimen cell and in-phase tilt of different magnitude about the [001] direction. At low temperature 10 K, Rietveld refinement of powder diffraction data revealed that the crystal structure of sample is distorted with a single orthorhombic symmetry (space group Pbnm). Magnetic measurements indicate that our investigated sample exhibits an overall anti-ferromagnetic behavior mainly attributed to the frustration induced by both competing AFM Cr{sup 3+}-O-Cr{sup 3+}, Mn{sup 4+}-O-Mn{sup 4+} networks, and the mixed one Mn{sup 4+}-O-Cr{sup 3+}exchange magnetic interactions. The temperature dependence of the resistivity measured under zero field shows a semi-conducting behavior in the whole temperature range, which probably could be described by the adiabatic small polaron hoping model with relatively high polaron activation energy.