Impact of reduced dimensionality on the magnetic and magnetocaloric response of La0.7Ca0.3MnO3

Understanding the impact of reduced dimensionality on the magnetic and magnetocaloric responses of a material is vital in incorporating it as an active magnetic refrigerant in cooling devices. By contrasting the magnetic and magnetocaloric behaviors of bulk polycrystalline, sol-gel derived nanocrystalline, and pulsed laser deposited thin film forms of the La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 system, we show that reducing the dimensionality of a ferromagnetic material tends to broaden and shift the paramagnetic to ferromagnetic transition to lower temperatures, while decreasing the saturation magnetization and the magnitude of the magnetic entropy change. Relative to its bulk counterpart, a pronounced broadening of the magnetic entropy change peak in the thin film leads to enhanced refrigerant capacity-an important figure-of-merit for active magnetic refrigeration technology. With reduced dimensionality, universal curves based on re-scaled entropy change curves tend toward collapse, indicating a weakening of the first order nature of the transition in the nanocrystalline samples and a crossover to second order in the thin film. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4792239]