Magnetocaloric alloys useful for magnetic refrigeration applications

摘要

The present invention relates to a magnetocaloric material containing an alloy useful in magnetic refrigeration applications.In some embodiments, the disclosed alloys may be compositions that are fairly inexpensive cerium, neodymium, and / or gadolinium based, and in some cases indicate only the secondary magnetic phase transition near their Curie temperature and thus Thermal and structural hysteresis losses are limited.This makes it an attractive candidate for use in magnetic refrigeration applications.Surprisingly, the performance of the disclosed material is similar to or is superior to that of many known expensive rare earth based magnetocaloric materials.