Magnetic properties and large reversible magnetocaloric effect in Er3Pd2

The magnetic properties and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of binary intermetallic compound Er3Pd2 were studied. It exhibits a paramagnetic (PM) to antiferromagnetic (AFM) transition at Néel temperature (TN) = 10 K. A large reversible MCE was observed which is related to a second order magnetic transition from PM to AFM state. The values of maximum magnetic entropy change (-ΔSMmax) and adiabatic temperature change (ΔTadmax) reach 8.9 J/kg-K and 2.9 K respectively for the field change of 50 kOe with no obvious hysteresis loss. The effective magnetic moment was determined to be 10.16 µB/Er3+, which is notably higher than that of free ion value of Er3+ (9.59 µB), suggests that Pd ions also have considerable amount of magnetic moments in this compound.