Anisotropic materials: A way to increase the efficiency of magnetic refrigeration

A breakthrough step in the development of magnetic refrigeration would be to find a way to increase the cooling capacity of the magnetic refrigerant material in order to make this technology even more energy efficient. In this paper, we present a theoretical study which shows how to increase the refrigerant capacity using anisotropic materials. We examine some of the well-known Laves phase compounds that can be described by a Hamiltonian which includes second order and spin reorientation effects. Our results indicate that in some cases it is theoretically possible to increase cooling capacity by up to similar to65%. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.