Magnetocaloric effect in rare-earth pseudobinary Er(Co1-cNic)2 -: art. no. 064421

In this paper we study the magnetocaloric effect in the Laves phase pseudobinary Er(Co1-cNic)(2). We use a theoretical model, considering both the localized spins of rare-earth ions and the itinerant electrons of the transition elements. The two-body interactions are treated in the mean-field approach and the disorder is treated in the coherent-potential approximation. The calculated isothermal magnetic entropy and the adiabatic temperature change exhibit a good agreement with the available experimental data. We also propose a composite material, based on different samples of the pseudobinary Er(Co1-cNic)(2), to work as a magnetic refrigerant in the Ericsson cycle in the temperature range from 15 K to 36 K.