Simulation of the magnetocaloric effect in Tb nanofilms

Abstract

Rare-earth (RE) metals have different magnetic structures resulting from the competition between the crystal-field and exchange interactions. When a magnetic field is applied it creates a third interaction and the magnetic structures are more complicated. In thin films, it is expected that even the magnetic arrangement itself can be strongly modified. Rare-earth helimagnets such as Terbium (Tb), Holmium (Ho) and Dysprosium (Dy) represent the best candidates to evidence such finite-size effects. This finite-size effect is caused by the reduced number of atoms in the direction perpendicular to the film plane that leads to a decrease of the total magnetic exchange energy. We report this contribution to the investigation of magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of thin Terbium films in the helimagnetic temperature range, from TC = 219 K to TN = 231 K, for external fields of the order of 1 kOe. We find that for strong fields, H = 50 kOe, the adiabatic temperature change ΔT near the Néel temperature is around 15 K for any thickness of Tb films. However large thickness effects are found for small values of the magnetic field. For field strength of the order of a few kOe, the thermocaloric efficiency increases significantly for ultrathin (nanomagnetic) films.