Structural, magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of hexagonal MnCoGe-based thin films

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The characteristic size of the magnetocaloric materials in magnetic refrigerators, thermomagnetic regenerators and energy harvesters is usually down to micrometer and nanometer length scales, which provides the largest possible contact surface area to the heat transfer liquid. Therefore, it is pivotal to investigate the structural, magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of magnetocaloric materials at micrometer and nanometer length scales. In the present study, we have successfully fabricated MnCoGe-based thin films using the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The as-deposited film shows a dense surface, homogeneous chemical distribution and a preferred orientation along the c-axis of the hexagonal Ni2In-type structure. In-situ temperature-dependent X-ray diffraction measurements on the as-deposited films reveal an irreversible structural degradation above 300 °C due to the considerable evaporation of the Mn atoms, which causes the formation of microscale pores in the films. The thermomagnetic behavior of the film annealed at 250 °C displays a reversible second-order ferromagnetic transition of the hexagonal phase at Curie temperature TC = 275 K, and a first-order hexagonal-orthorhombic structural transition below 200 K. The decoupling of the magnetic and structural transitions brings reversible magnetocaloric effect with the entropy change ΔS values of 2.5 J/(kgK) and the refrigeration capacity reaching 89 J/kg in Δμ0H = 5 T, which are comparable to other reported magnetocaloric thin films. Moreover, antiferromagnetic coupling in the low-temperature orthorhombic phase was observed, which has rarely been reported in the MnCoGe-based bulk alloys. The different magnetic ground states between the thin film and the bulk alloys may be originated from the strain effect imposed by the Al2O3 substrate. Consequently, this work not only provides insights into the structural, magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of the MnCoGe-based alloys at a nanometer length scale, but also offers a new idea for tailoring the multifunctional properties for this material family.