Anisotropic magnetocaloric effect in Fe3−xGeTe2

Abstract

We present a comprehensive study on anisotropic magnetocaloric porperties of the van der Waals weak-itinerant ferromagnet Fe3−xGeTe2 that features gate-tunable room-temperature ferromagnetism in few-layer device. Intrinsic magnetocrystalline anisotropy is observed to be temperature-dependent and most likely favors the long-range magnetic order in thin Fe3−xGeTe2 crsytal. The magnetic entropy change ΔSM also reveals an anisotropic characteristic between H//ab and H//c, which could be well scaled into a universal curve. The peak value −ΔSMmax of 1.20 J kg−1 K−1 and the corresponding adiabatic temperature change ΔTad of 0.66 K are deduced from heat capacity with out-of-plane field change of 5 T. By fitting of the field-dependent parameters of −ΔSMmax and the relative cooling power RCP, it gives −∆SMmax ∝ Hn with n = 0.603(6) and RCP ∝ Hm with m = 1.20(1) when H//c. Given the high and tunable Tc, Fe3−xGeTe2 crystals are of interest for fabricating the heterostructure-based spintronics device.