Bandwidth-driven nature of the pressure-induced metal state of LaMnO3

Aline Y. Ramos (1) , Narcizo M. Souza-Neto (2) , Hélio C. N. Tolentino (3) , Oana Bunau (4) , Yves Joly (4) , Stéphane Grenier (1) , Jean-Paul Itié (5) , Anne-Marie Flank (5) , Pierre Lagarde (5) , Alberto Caneiro (6, 7)

1 NEEL - MRS - Matériaux, Rayonnements, Structure
2 LNLS - Laboratório Nacional de Luz Sìncrotron
3 NEEL - CRG - CRG & Grands instruments
4 NEEL - SIN - Surfaces, Interfaces et Nanostructures
5 SSOLEIL - Synchrotron SOLEIL
6 Centro Atómico Bariloche [Argentine]
7 Instituto Balseiro [Bariloche]

Using X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), we studied the local structure in LaMnO3 under applied pressure across and well above the insulator-to-metal (IM) transition. A hysteretic behavior points to the coexistence of two phases within a large pressure range (7 to 25 GPa). The ambient phase with highly Jahn-Teller (JT) distorted MnO6 octahedra is progressively substituted by a new phase with less-distorted JT MnO6 units. The electronic delocalization leading to the IM transition is finger-printed from the pre-edge XAS structure around 30 GPa. We observed that the phase transition takes place without any significant reduction of the JT distortion. This entails band overlap as the driving mechanism of the IM transition.

Mots clés: pressure effects; 71.30.+h Metal-insulator transitions and other electronic transitions; 61.50.Ks Crystallographic aspects of phase transformations; heavy fermions; 71.27.+a Strongly correlated electron systems

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Aline Y. Ramos, Narcizo M. Souza-Neto, Hélio C. N. Tolentino, Oana Bunau, Yves Joly, et al.. Bandwidth-driven nature of the pressure-induced metal state of LaMnO3. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2011, 96 (3), pp.36002. ⟨10.1209/0295-5075/96/36002⟩. ⟨hal-00634500⟩