Influence of Covalent Element B and Si Addition on Magnetocaloric Properties of Gd-Co-Fe-(B,Si) Amorphous Alloys

The effect of covalent element addition on the magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of ferrimagnetic Gd60Co20Fe20 amorphous alloy was studied. Particularly, the co-doping of B and Si promoted the magnetocaloric performance (with a larger magnetic entropy change |ΔSM| at higher working temperature) of the initial Gd60Co20Fe20 amorphous alloy. This is possibly ascribed to the modified magnetic transition behavior. Additionally, the broadened magnetocaloric effect with |ΔSM| of 2.25 J kg−1 K−1 at 222.5 K under a magnetic field change of 0–2 T and high relative cooling power of 396.0 J kg−1 were obtained for (Gd0.6Co0.2Fe0.2)95B2Si3. These properties reveal that the material could be a good candidate as a magnetic refrigerant suitable for active magnetic refrigerators.