Magnetocaloric effect and microstructure of amorphous/nanocrystalline HoErFe melt-extracted microwires

High-entropy alloys (HEA) represent potentially disruptive materials across multiple industries, especially for refrigeration technologies. Building metal components layer-by-layer increases design freedom and manufacturing flexibility, thereby enabling high magnetic thermal properties of the multicomponent alloy.

However, excessive alloying elements could limit the mass production potential, while prolonging the time to market. Here we demonstrate that a high performance magnetocaloric material can be synthesized from only three elements, HoErFe, by taking advantage of the combination of rare earth and transition elements.

Novel medium-entropy alloys (MEA) are prepared by melt-extraction and exhibit excellent magnetocaloric properties. The amorphous/nanocrystalline structure of the microwires, which is confirmed by both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), gives the primary contribution to the MCE.

The microwires undergo a ferromagnetic-paramagnetic (FM-PM) transition near the Curie temperature (TC = ~44 K), and a spin-glass (SG) behavior could be observed below the TC. The maximum magnetic entropy (-ΔSMmax) was 9.5 J kg−1 K−1 under a field change of 5 T. Meanwhile, the refrigerant capacity (RC) and the relative cooling power (RCP) of the alloy microwires were 450 J·kg−1and 588 J kg−1, respectively.

The high refrigeration efficiency and high magnetocaloric effect that is reversible make these novel metallic microwires attractive working materials for low-temperature magnetic refrigeration applications.