Study of elastic moduli and thermal properties of RMnO3 (R = La, Nd) compounds

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model for quantitative analysis of temperature-dependent heat capacity calculation of the magnetoresistance compounds RMnO 3 ( R = La , Nd ). The results on heat capacity obtained by us are in good agreement with the measured values. An effective interionic interaction potential (EIoIP) with the long-range Coulomb, van der Waals (vdW) interaction and short-range repulsive interaction up to second neighbor ions within the Hafemeister and Flygare approach was formulated to estimate the Debye and Einstein temperature and was found to be consistent with the available experimental data. In addition, the properties studied are the cohesive energy, molecular force constant, Restrahlen frequency and Gruneisen parameter. After characterizing thermal properties, a systematic investigation of elastic behavior has been undertaken and it has been found that the elastic moduli are decreasing continuously with increasing temperature.