Magneto-caloric effect of a Gd50Co50 amorphous alloy near the freezing point of water

In the present work, we report the magneto-caloric effect (MCE) of a binary Gd50Co50 amorphous alloy near the freezing temperature of water. The Curie temperature of Gd50Co50 amorphous ribbons is about 267.5 K, which is very close to room temperature. The peak value of the magnetic entropy change (-Delta S-m(peak)) and the resulting adiabatic temperature rise (Delta T-ad.) of the Gd50Co50 amorphous ribbons is much higher than that of any other amorphous alloys previously reported with a T-c near room temperature. On the other hand, although the -Delta S-m(peak) of Gd50Co50 amorphous ribbons is not as high as those of crystalline alloys near room temperature, its refrigeration capacity (RC) is still much larger than the RC values of these crystalline alloys. The binary Gd50Co50 amorphous alloy provides a basic alloy for developing high performance multi-component amorphous alloys near room temperature. (C) 2015 Author(s).