Effect of annealing treatment on the magnetic properties of mechanochemical synthesized manganites

In this paper, we have investigated the effect of annealing on structural and magnetic properties of La0.8Pb0.2MnO3 (LPMO) polycrystalline samples. Mechanochemical procedure has been used to produce LPMO nanocrystalline samples from oxide precursors. From the AC susceptibility measurements we found that the magnitude of susceptibility increases and the paramagnetic–ferromagnetic (PM–FM) transition width decreases by annealing the ball milled powders. Also, reentrant spin glass (RSG) behavior has been found in high temperature annealed samples. It seems that, due to the evaporation of PbO in high temperature annealed samples, vacancies created in perovskite structure and portion of the Mn3+–O–Mn4+ network is broken. So the FM double-exchange interaction is weakened due to the magnetic dilution and the antiferromagnetc (AFM) phase fraction increases in high temperature annealed samples. The competition between FM double-exchange interaction and AFM super-exchange interaction produces spin frustration and is responsible for the occurrence of RSG.