Direct measurements of conventional and anisotropic magnetocaloric effect in binary RAl2 single crystals

Abstract

We report on specific heat and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) measurements in single crystals of HoAl2, DyAl2, and TbAl2 measured by a heat flux technique using Peltier devices. Those compounds order ferromagnetically at 31 K, 61 K, and 106 K respectively, and present a spin reorientation transition (SRT) below TC. We study the dependence of the SRT with magnetic field and temperature by means of specific heat measurements performed in single crystals oriented at the 100, 110, and 111 directions with the aid of calculations using a simple model. We obtained the conventional MCE for HoAl2 and TbAl2 and also the anisotropic version of the effect obtained indirectly from the specific heat for TbAl2 and DyAl2. We also present the results for a direct determination of the anisotropic MCE for DyAl2 by measuring the heat flux generated by a rotation of the single crystal under constant field.