Anisotropic magnetocaloric effect and magnetoresistance in antiferromagnetic HoNiGe3 single crystal

We report anisotropic magnetocaloric effect and magnetoresistance in antiferromagnetic HoNiGe3 single crystal grown by Ge flux method. HoNiGe3 single crystal exhibits antiferromagnetic order and large magnetocrystalline anisotropy below the Néel temperature TN = 10.5 K. Meanwhile, with increasing the magnetic field, HoNiGe3 undergoes the spin-flip transition induced by the magnetic field along the a axis, while the spin-flop transition occurs for the field along the other orientations, which gives rise to anisotropic magnetoresistance behavior along three axes. With the magnetic field change of 0–50 kOe, the maximum magnetic entropy changes obtained along the a, b, and c axes are −13.9, 2.5 and −7.7 J kg−1K−1, respectively. The maximum rotating magnetic entropy change is −12.3 J kg−1K−1 under 50 kOe by rotating the magnetic field from the b axis to the a axis, and the corresponding refrigeration capacity is 193 J/kg, which demonstrates HoNiGe3 to be an attractive candidate for novel rotating magnetic refrigeration at low temperature region. •Field-induced spin-flip and -flop transition is observed in HoNiGe3 single crystal.•Large rotating magnetocaloric effect is obtained in HoNiGe3 single crystal.•Magnetoresistance related to the spin-flip and -flop transitions is observed.