Recent progresses in exploring the rare earth based intermetallic compounds for cryogenic magnetic refrigeration

Abstract

Nowadays, the magnetic materials with special functional characteristics are played very important roles in the development of our present modern society. The magnetic refrigeration (MR) technology which is based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of magnetic solids has been considered as an energy-efficient alternative method to our present well used gas compression/expression refrigeration technology. The commercial products of magnetic refrigerators are still in the developing stage, searching and designing magnetic solids with outstanding MCE performances is one of the most important tasks at present. This paper briefly reviewed our recent progress in the investigation of the crystal structure, magnetic properties and magnetocaloric performances in several series of binary and ternary rare earth (RE) based intermetallic compounds. Some of them have been found to exhibit promising magnetocaloric performances at low temperatures which make them be considerable for cryogenic MR application.