Abstract
Magnetic refrigeration based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) is an environment-friendly, high-efficiency technology. It has been believed that a large MCE can be realized in the materials with a first-order magnetic transition (FOMT). Here, we found that TlFe3Te3 is a ferromagnetic metal with a first-order magnetic transition occurring at Curie temperature TC = 220 K. The maximum values of magnetic entropy change (Δ) along the crystallographic c-axis, estimated from the magnetization data, reach to 5.9 J kg−1K−1 and 7.0 J kg−1 K−1 for the magnetic field changes, ΔH = 0–1 T and 0–2 T, respectively, which is significantly larger than that of MCE materials with a second-order magnetic transition (SOMT). Besides the large ΔSM, the low-level both thermal and field hysteresis make TlFe3Te3 compound an attractive candidate for magnetic refrigeration. Our findings should inspire the exploration of high performance new MCE materials.
Highlights
We found that this compound exhibits a large MCE with a small magnetic field change, ΔH, and with a low-level thermal and field hysteresis, identifying it to be another class of solids for the magnetic refrigerants
The lattice parameters a = 9.355(1) Å and c = 4.224(5) Å were obtained by the refinement, which are in good agreement with previous reports[44]
The electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA) experiments performed on several single crystals verified that the sample composition is of Tl : Fe : Te = 0.99(1) : 2.95(2) : 3.00(1), which is in consistent with the nominal composition
Summary
The small resistivity should be viewed as a merit since a good thermal conductivity is required for a high performance magnetic refrigerant material[45]. Both a rather low residual resistivity and a considerable large residual resistivity ratio (RRR) = 67 indicate that our crystals are of high quality. MCE materials (see Table 1), these values of TlFe3Te3 are comparable with the most potential magnetic refrigerant materials with the a first-order ferromagnetic transition (see Table 1). Further efforts should be done to substitute Tl by other nontoxic elements in order to utilize this type of materials widely
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