Advanced materials for magnetic cooling: Fundamentals and practical aspects

Over the last two decades, the research activities on magnetocalorics have been exponentially increased, leading to the discovery of a wide category of materials including intermetallics and oxides. Even though the reported materials were found to show excellent magnetocaloric properties on a laboratory scale, only a restricted family among them could be upscaled toward industrial levels and implemented as refrigerants in magnetic cooling devices. On the other hand, in the most of the reported reviews, the magnetocaloric materials are usually discussed in terms of their adiabatic temperature and entropy changes (Delta T-ad and Delta S), which is not enough to get more insight about their large scale applicability. In this review, not only the fundamental properties of the recently reported magnetocaloric materials but also their thermodynamic performance in functional devices are discussed. The reviewed families particularly include Gd1-xRx alloys, LaFe13-xSix, MnFeP1-xAsx, and R(1-x)A(x)MnO(3) (R = lanthanide and A = divalent alkaline earth)-based compounds. Other relevant practical aspects such as mechanical stability, synthesis, and corrosion issues are discussed. In addition, the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters that play a crucial role in the control of magnetic and magnetocaloric properties are regarded. In order to reproduce the needed magnetocaloric parameters, some practical models are proposed. Finally, the concepts of the rotating magnetocaloric effect and multilayered magnetocalorics are introduced. Published by AIP Publishing.