Abstract:
The effect of Tm doping on the magnetic phase transition and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of ErCr
2Si
2-based compounds were systematically investigated. A series of polycrystalline Er
1-xTm
xCr
2Si
2 (0 ≤
x ≤ 0.4) samples were successfully synthesized by the arc-melting method. X-ray powder diffraction combined with Rietveld refinement indicated that all samples crystallized in the ThCr
2Si
2-type tetragonal structure with space group
I4/
mmm. It was found that with increasing Tm concentration, the saturation magnetization (
MS) decreased from 7.7
μB(
x = 0) to 6.8
μB(
x = 0.4). Under a low magnetic field (Δ
μ0H ) change of 0-1 T, the
x = 0.1 sample exhibited the optimal magnetocaloric performance, with maximum magnetic entropy change (-Δ
SMmax ) of 19.7 J/(kg·K), representing an enhancement of 18.7% compared with the reported undoped ErCr
2Si
2 (-Δ
SMmax =16.6 J/(kg·K)). Moreover, the saturation driving magnetic field
HS corresponding to the
magnetic entropy change decreased from 0.45 T to 0.4 T. Tm doping also significantly broadened the effective refrigeration operating temperature window (
Tope). Under a magnetic field change of ∆
μ0H =
0-5
T,
Tope expanded from 14.1 K (2-16.1
K) for
x =
0
to
17.3 K (2-19.3 K) for
x =
0.4, corresponding to an increase of approximately 22.7%. In addition,
both the thermal hysteresis loss (Δ
Thys) and the average magnetic hysteresis loss (
Wave)
decreased with increasing Tm concentration, from 0.33 K and 2.28 J/kg
at
x = 0 to 0.22 K and 0.89 J/kg
at
x = 0.4, representing reductions of about 33.3% and 60.9%, respectively. Arrott plots, power-law critical exponent fitting, and the universal behavior of the reduced magnetic entropy change curves consistently demonstrated that this system exhibited typical second-order magnetic phase transition characteristics. Its small thermal and magnetic hysteresis losses were considered beneficial for practical applications in industrial magnetic refrigeration.