Magnetocaloric Effect in Erbium Scandium Alloys

Effects of Sc substitution on metamagnetic transitions for erbium are investigated for Er1–xScx (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.2) to find optimal magnetocaloric materials for high efficient magnetic refrigeration using static bias magnetic field. We observed that the Neel temperature decreases with increasing x. The magnetocaloric properties are discussed in comparison with the previously reported phase diagram. We found that the metamagnetic transitions from the antiferromagnetic-like configurations to the ferromagnetic-like ones are accompanied with relatively large magnetic entropy changes for all the samples. The obtained knowledge would be helpful to further study on magnetic refrigeration utilizing the features of metamagnetic transitions.