Eur. Phys. J. B 3, 169-174 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050298

Structure, composition and magnetocaloric properties in polycrystalline La 1-x A x MnO 3+8 (A = Na, K)

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, P.R. China
² Department of Chemistry, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, P.R. China
³ Department of Physics, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050091, P. R. China

Corresponding author: ^a ufp@netra.nju.edu.cn

Received: 12 September 1997
Revised: 18 December 1997
Accepted: 21 January 1998
Published online: 15 May 1998

Abstract

The polycrystalline perovskitelike manganese oxides LaA_xMnO (A = Na, and K, ) have been fabricated by sol-gel technique. For all the compositions explored in this work, the average manganese oxidation state is practically constant, at for A = Na, and for A = K, respectively. A close relationship is confirmed to hold between the Curie temperature (T_c) and the bond distance of Mn-O. Results of magnetic measurements show that these materials can be utilized as suitable candidates for magnetic refrigerants with wide applied temperature span, for their significant entropy change and the easily tuned Curie temperature.