Enhancement of Curie temperature and transition temperature range induced by Al doping in Mn1-xAlxCoGe

Mn1-xAlxCoGe alloys with a second order transition were produced by arc-melting method. The substitution of Mn by Al increased the Curie temperature (TC) from 260.5 K to 300.8 K, the magnetic entropy change (|ΔSM|) decreased from 3.78 J·Kg−1K−1 to 2.35 J·Kg−1K−1 under a field change of Δµ0H=5 T. In addition, the |ΔSM| well linearly depends on the H2/3 around TC. Furthermore, the relative cooling power (RCP) can reach 242.3 J·Kg−1 with a large full width at half maximum of |ΔSM| (75.5 K) for x=0.02. The decrease of |ΔSM| is explained by the corresponding monotonical decrease of magnetic moment per formula unit.