2 Experimental Details
High purity acetates of La(CH3COO)3.xH2O (99.9%,
Aldrich), Sr(CH3COO)2 (99%, Aldrich) and Mn(CH3
COO)2.4H2O (>99.9%, Fluka) were used as starting materials.
In a typical procedure, 0.007 mol metal acetates
with a mole ratio corresponding to the nominal composition
of La:Sr:Mn ratio of 0.7:0.3:1 were dissolved in deionized
water (DI water) at a ratio of 5:1 (volume(ml)/weight(g))
of DI water to total acetate salts. The mixed solution
was stirred with a magnetic stirrer at room temperature
for 15 min, and was thermally decomposed in an oven
under normal atmosphere at different temperatures from
600–1000◦C for 6 h and left to cool down to room temperature
before being ground to obtain LSMO nanoparticles.
To better understand the thermal stability, decomposition
temperature and mechanism of the thermal decomposition,
two precursors of the mixed metal acetates in DI
water (precursor A) and the mixed ground metal acetates
without water (precursor B) were characterized by TG/DTA
at 10◦C min−1 from 25 to 1000◦C (NETZSCH, STA449C
Jupiter).
There is no characterization of the crystal structure in this
paper. Only powder diffractograms are shown for the purpose
of analysis of crystalline phase. The crystal structure
of the synthesized La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 nanoparticles was characterized
by X-ray diffraction (XRD) (Philips PW3040, The
Netherlands) with the crystallite size calculated from the
broadening of the XRD peaks using the Scherrer’s equation.
The functional groups present in the samples were studied