Indications of intrinsic chemical and structural inhomogeneity in lightly doped La1-xSrxMnO3 -: art. no. 207205

X-ray absorption fine structure measurements of the Sr and La K edges of the solid solution La1-xSr xMnO3 reveal a consistent deviation from a random distribution of Sr at the La/Sr sites for xless than or similar to0.3 . Local structural disorder on the cation sublattice in the low-x samples is also observed to differ in the vicinity of the La-rich and Sr-rich clusters. The local clustering and structural disorder establish an intrinsic chemical as well as structural inhomogeneity on the nanometer scale, which may provide a mechanism for the nucleation of magnetoelectronic phase separation.