| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1799202 | Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials | 2015 | 4 Pages |
•A process route, called Hydrogen-Decrepitation-Sintering-Hydrogenation (HDSH), is proposed as a possible alternative to fabricate bulk parts of La(Fe,Si)13Hy.•The process managed to produce bulk parts of almost single-phase La(Fe,Si)13Hy.•Still, the α-Fe content increased from nearly 1–6 wt%, for hydrogenation periods of 4 h, effect attributed to the formation of La secondary phases.•H gradient was observed in the bulk samples produced by HDSH, which lead to a smoothing of the magnetocaloric effect, quantified by ΔTadΔTad.
Results are reported on the preparation of bulk parts of La(Fe,Si)13Hy via the Hydrogen-Decrepitation-Sintering-Hydrogenation (HDSH) process. Net shape parts for application in room-temperature magnetic refrigeration have been produced in only 8 h of heat treatment which is considerably faster than the conventional ingot homogenization heat treatment of 7 days. The samples produced by HDSH showed higher amounts of hydrogen than the parts hydrogenated by the conventional method of thermal homogenization (20 h at 1423 K), milling to fine powder and subsequent hydrogenation. Hydrogenation parameters play an important role for the stability of the desired La(Fe,Si)13 phase during the process. Hydrogen desorption was seen to occur at two temperature ranges as a result of internal gradients. Dissimilar amounts of α-Fe were precipitated for different hydrogenation times. As a result, parts produced via HDSH with 2 and 4 h of hydrogenation exhibited different magnetocaloric behaviours. For a hydrogenation step of 4 h, parts with a demagnetization factor of 0.49 showed an adiabatic temperature change (ΔTadΔTad) higher than 1 K for a temperature range of 40 K with a maximum value of 1.57 K for an applied magnetic field of 1.75 T. As the duration of the hydrogenation step of the HDSH process decreased to 2 h, ΔTadΔTad was larger than 1 K for a temperature range of 24 K. However the maximum value of ΔTadΔTad at 328 K was 2.2 K, which is 37.5% larger than the maximum value for a hydrogenation period of 4 h.
