Investigation of activated transport in hole doped rare earth manganites in the high temperature paramagnetic regime

Electronic transport in the high temperature paramagnetic regime of the colossal magnetoresistive oxides, La1−xAxMnO3, A=Ca, Sr, Ba, x≃0.1–0.3, has been investigated using resistivity measurements. The main motivation for this work is to relook into the actual magnitude of the activation energy for transport in a number of manganites and study its variation as a function of hole doping (x), average A-site cation radius (〈rA〉), cationic disorder (σ2) and strain (εzz). We show that contrary to current practice, the description of a single activation energy in this phase is not entirely accurate. Our results clearly reveal a strong dependence of the activation energy on the hole doping as well as disorder. Comparing the results across different substituent species with different 〈rA〉 reveals the importance of σ2 as a metric to qualify any analysis based on 〈rA〉.