Magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of La0.85(Na1−xKx)0.15MnO3 ceramics produced by reactive spark plasma sintering

Abstract

La0.85(Na1−xKx)0.15MnO3 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) ceramics were synthesized from the raw La(OH)3, NaOH, KOH, and MnO2 powders using Reactive Spark Plasma Sintering. All the compounds were obtained as pure, dense, and ultrafine grained pellets. The Rietveld refinement of the X-Ray powder diffraction shows that all our synthesized samples are single phase and crystallize in the distorted rhombohedral system with R-3c space group. The thermal variation of their magnetization under a magnetic applied field of 50 mT shows a paramagnetic to ferromagnetic transition at a Curie temperature very close to room temperature. The magnetic entropy change, deduced from magnetization measurements versus magnetic applied field up to 5 T at several temperatures exhibits a maximum |ΔSM|max which slightly increases with increasing K content. The relative cooling power values, inferred from the |ΔSM| vs T peak broadening, vary slightly with the potassium content, reaching, values between 316 and 289 Jkg−1, in an applied magnetic field of 5 T, when x increases from 0 to 1. Technically, these large values make the prepared materials very promising for domestic magnetic refrigeration.