  Combining multiple degrees of freedom in strongly-correlated materials such
as transition-metal oxides would lead to fascinating magnetic and
magnetocaloric features. Herein, the strain effects are used to markedly tailor
the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of PrVO3 thin films. The selection
of appropriate thickness and substrate enables us to dramatically decrease the
coercive magnetic field from 2.4 T previously observed in sintered PVO3 bulk to
0.05 T for compressive thin films making from the PrVO3 compound a nearly soft
magnet. This is associated with a marked enhancement of the magnetic moment and
the magnetocaloric effect that reach unusual maximum values of roughly 4.86 uB
and 56.8 J/kg K in the magnetic field change of 6 T applied in the sample plane
at the cryogenic temperature range (3 K), respectively. This work strongly
suggests that taking advantage of different degrees of freedom and the
exploitation of multiple instabilities in a nanoscale regime is a promising
strategy for unveiling unexpected phases accompanied by a large magnetocaloric
effect in oxides.
