Magnetocaloric effect in epitaxial La0.56Sr0.44MnO3 alloy and digital heterostructures

This work investigates the magnetocaloric effect of two epitaxial manganite heterostructures, one being a single layer La0.56Sr0.44MnO3 alloy with randomly distributed La and Sr cations, the other a digitally synthesized superlattice of LaMnO3 and SrMnO3 fabricated to be compositionally identical to the alloy. The magnetic entropy change and relative cooling power were larger for the alloy than the superlattice, though both are suppressed relative to bulk materials. These results indicate that disorder of the A-site cation species in the perovskite structure may play a crucial role in defining the magnetocaloric effect in complex oxide materials. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3677670]