Effects of preparation conditions on the magnetocaloric properties of Gd thin films

The impact of the deposition temperature and chamber gettering on Ta(5 nm)/Gd(30 nm)/Ta(5 nm) thin films magnetocaloric effect properties was investigated. Increasing the deposition temperature generally improves the entropy peak (magnitude, full width at half max, and temperature of the peak) but also leads to significant oxidation. Gettering the chamber prior to deposition not only reduced this oxidation issue but also increased the relative cooling power of films grown at elevated temperatures by as much as 33% over ungettered samples.