High pressure study of magnetocaloric effect in Ho3Co and Tb3Co

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The magnetocaloric effect of intermetallic compounds of Tb3Co and Ho3Co is studied under high pressures up to ∼1 GPa using pressure dependent dc magnetisation and specific heat measurements at ambient conditions. The magnetic entropy change (−ΔSM) obtained from magnetisation data and adiabatic change in temperature (ΔTad) determined from zero-field specific heat and magnetisation data are found to be nearly identical within error limits with those deduced from purely field dependent specific heat experiments. With increasing hydrostatic pressure to ∼1 GPa, the −ΔSM and ΔTad, both show a significant enhancement of about 37% and 13%, respectively for 9 T field change in case of Tb3Co. On the other hand, Ho3Co exhibits a decrease of about 8% in both −ΔSM and ΔTad with increasing pressure. The refrigerant capacity (RC) also increases from 650 J kg−1 to 847 J kg−1 in the case of Tb3Co and it goes down from 665 J kg−1 to 615 J kg−1 for Ho3Co for an increase of pressure to 1 GPa. With increasing pressure, the peak widths of both −ΔSM and ΔTad increase in case of Tb3Co, although the increase is more in −ΔSM. However, such noticeable changes in peak widths with pressure were not observed in Ho3Co. At ambient pressure, peak of −ΔSM () scales with for both the compounds, consistent with the prediction of mean field theory (MFT) for second order magnetic transition. However, deviation from MFT was noticed at high pressures as was found to scale with instead of for both the alloys. Further, normalised −ΔSM curves for different ΔH and pressures collapse on a single universal curve in both the compounds thereby indicating that the second order magnetic transition persists even up to ∼1 GPa pressure.