Structure and Morphology of Copper Subtituted in La0.667Ba0.333Mn1-xCuxO3 (x = 0.35 and 0.40)

A perovskite manganate material La0,667Ba0,333Mn1-xCuxO3 (x = 0.35 and 0.40) were prepared. The samples were synthesized by sol gel method. The samples were sintered at 1000OC for 6 hours. Rietveld refinement shows that both samples are crystallized in orthorhombic structure with Pnma space group. This results is in accordance with Goldschmidt’s tolerance factor value which are 0.8698 and 0.8701 for x = 0.35 and 0.4, respectively. Subtitutions with large amount of copper ions in B-sites caused the unit cell to decrease from 236.234 Å3 to 236.088 Å3 . Futher calculation from crystallography Refinement also shows that copper subtitutions increase the crystallite size of the samples from 74.8 nm to 94.49 nm. It has been found from the SEM results that copper subtitutions also alter the morphology of the samples.