Abstract
A promising solid‐state refrigeration technology, known as magnetic refrigeration,
has reached a groundbreaking result. The potential for environmentally friendly cooling
using the magnetocaloric effect is disadvantaged by small temperature windows of effective
cooling and the requirement of expensive, high magnetic field producing Nd‐Fe‐B permanent
magnets. Researchers from Imperial College London, Ames Laboratory (USA) and DTU Energy,
Technical University of Denmark (see article no. 1700143) show through utilising a larger portion of the phase diagram of so‐called soft first
order magnetic materials that they can reduce the maximum field required to within
that attainable with cheap ferrite‐based permanent magnets (around 0.5 T) and significantly
broaden the working temperature range. Traditionally, magnetocaloric materials are
controlled through temperature and applied magnetic field, but with the addition of
applied hydrostatic pressure it is possible to move around in the phase diagram of
the La(Fe,Mn,Si)13Hz material series, taking advantage of its so‐called multicaloric properties. By careful
choice of magnetic field and pressure controlled cooling cycles this work shows that
a significant bottleneck towards commercially competitive refrigeration devices based
on the magnetocaloric effect can be overcome.
Original language | English |
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Publication date | 2017 |
Publisher | Wiley-VCH |
Volume | 11 |
Number of pages | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |