Giant low-field reversible magnetocaloric effect at liquid helium temperature of niobium and iron co-substituted EuTiO3 compounds

Abstract

Giant magnetocaloric effect (MCE) materials in the liquid helium temperature region have attracted a lot of attention in the field of low-temperature magnetic refrigeration (MR). In this study, a series of niobium (Nb) and iron (Fe) co-substituted EuTiO3 perovskites with cubic structure (space group pm3m) was successfully fabricated, and their magnetic properties as well as cryogenic magnetocaloric effects were investigated in detail. As expected, the introduction of Nb and Fe can significantly modulate the magnetic phase transition and magnetocaloric effect of the EuTiO3 compounds. With increasing Fe concentration, two local minima corresponding to the AFM-FM magnetic phase transition near 5.0 K and FM-PM transition near 10 K with no hysteresis in the thermomagnetic curves are observed, which is attributed to an enhancement of FM coupling. At the same time, the gradually widened –ΔSM–T curves and the two peaks with a broad shoulder lead to considerable refrigeration capacity (RC). With the field change of ΔH = 2 T, the calculated values of −ΔSMmax for the EuTi0.9375–xNb0.0625FexO3 (x = 0.075, 0.1, 0.125, 0.15) compounds are 24.2, 17.6, 14.5 and 14.0 J/(kg·K), respectively. The corresponding RC values were calculated to be 144.6, 138.3, 151.2 and 159 J/kg, respectively. Especially, the values of −ΔSMmax for EuTi0.8625Nb0.0625Fe0.075O3 are 8.6 and 15.1 J/(kg·K) under low field changes of 0.5 and 1 T, respectively. The giant low-field reversible magnetocaloric effect makes them attractive candidates for magnetic refrigeration in the liquid helium temperature region.