Magnetothermal properties including magnetocaloric performance of the ternary rhombohedral Laves phase of Pr2Rh3Ge.

The article presents the study of the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) for the rhombohedral Laves phase of Pr 2 Rh 3 Ge, which shows a magnetic order below T C = 8.5 K. We have established that the compound exhibits a continuous second-order type of transition which was demonstrated and confirmed by several different techniques, mainly by analyzing universal curves of normalized entropy change as a function of scaled temperature. The observed MCE, in our opinion, is a consequence of an indirect exchange coupling between the magnetic sublattices of the rare earth ions, which, however, does not exclude the potential contribution of sublattice-containing transition metals. In this paper, the procedure to evaluate the MCE from magnetization and specific heat data is described. As a result, important parameters such as the isothermal magnetic entropy change (Δ S M), adiabatic temperature change (Δ T a d ), relative cooling power (RCP), and the temperature averaged entropy change (TEC) were determined. The highest values of − Δ S M , Δ T a d , and RCP for a field change (Δ μ 0 H) of 5 T at T C are 5.96 J/kg K, 3.87 K, and 72.62 J/kg, respectively. These results obtained for Pr 2 Rh 3 Ge seem to be, however, low compared to the values obtained for the rhombohedral Laves phases, belonging to the group of ternary germanides RE 2 Rh 3 Ge containing heavy rare earth metals (RE = Gd, Tb, Ho, and Er). Nevertheless, we believe that the results presented in this work extend and complement the current knowledge on the magnetocaloric properties of this family of materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]