Giant magnetocaloric effect in nanostructured Fe-Co-P amorphous alloys enabled through pulse electrodeposition

Abstract

In this work, amorphous Fe-Co-P films prepared by electrodeposition are found to exhibit dense microstructures with amorphous grains. Through a pulse electrodeposition synthesis route, complex microstructures containing nano-sized grains are obtained in the amorphous alloy films. The nanostructured Fe-Co-P amorphous alloys show superior soft magnetic and magnetocaloric properties as compared with those of other iron-based soft magnetic amorphous alloys reported to date. The coercive field of samples can be as small as 1.6 Oe at room temperature. The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of the ternary amorphous alloys has been investigated by evaluating the magnetic entropy changes, |ΔSM|, from their temperature-dependent magnetization behaviors. The |ΔSM| values are as high as 1.846 J kg−1 K−1 with an applied magnetic field of 10 kOe. With a temperature span of 90 K, the refrigerant capacity of samples can be as high as 118.64 J kg−1. The nanostructure enabled giant MCE in Fe-Co-P amorphous alloys is discussed.