Giant Low-Field Magnetocaloric Effect in the Superlattice Antiferromagnetic ErFe2Si2 Compound

Published

February 13, 2024

Author(s)

D. Wang, X. Zheng, J. Xu, L. He, Y. Gao, H. Huang, Hui Wu, X. Cao, D. Liu, J. Shen, G. Wang, J. Zhang, Y. Wu, F. Hu, S. Wang, B. Shen

Abstract

We present herein a systematic study of a polycrystalline magnetocaloric compound ErFe2Si2. It exhibits a transition from the antiferromagnetic to the paramagnetic phase around 3.0 K according to magnetic and heat capacity measurements. Neutron powder diffraction revealed that ErFe2Si2 possesses a superlattice magnetic structure with a propagation vector of (0, 0, 0.5). The superlattice magnetic structure can be modeled by a transverse spin density wave (cosine-modulated) or a spiral type, which cannot be distinguished solely by neutron powder diffraction (NPD) pattern fitting. The stability of different types of magnetic structures was also investigated by first-principles calculations. The ErFe2Si2 compound shows a giant magnetocaloric effect with a maximal negative magnetic entropy change and an adiabatic temperature change of 11.5 J/kg K and 5.7 K, respectively, under the field change of 0−1 T. The large low-field magnetocaloric effect is related to its low critical field of metamagnetic transition and its low quasi-saturation magnetic field. The excellent performance of ErFe2Si2 makes this compound a potential magnetocaloric material for applications at liquid helium temperatures.

Citation

Chemistry of Materials

Volume

36

Issue

3

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c03079

Local Download

Citation

Wang, D. , Zheng, X. , Xu, J. , He, L. , Gao, Y. , Huang, H. , Wu, H. , Cao, X. , Liu, D. , Shen, J. , Wang, G. , Zhang, J. , Wu, Y. , Hu, F. , Wang, S. and Shen, B. (2024), Giant Low-Field Magnetocaloric Effect in the Superlattice Antiferromagnetic ErFe2Si2 Compound, Chemistry of Materials, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c03079, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=959220 (Accessed October 14, 2025)