Gas liquefaction is an essential aspect for gas storage and transport and its demand will significantly increase as the use of gases such as natural gas as well as H2, He, N2, and O2 become prominent in the development of new technologies (e.g. hydrogen based ones). Systems based on the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) are attracting the interest of the scientific community as they can overcome some of the issues of conventional liquefaction systems [1, 2]. In this work, we studied a series of rare-earth rich RE6Co2Ga (RE = Ho, Dy or Gd) compounds, which shows excellent MCE in the range of H2 and N2 liquefaction temperatures [3]. All the samples crystallize in the Ho6Co2Ga-type crystal structure (Immm space group) without significant presence of impurity phases. The nature of the thermomagnetic transition depends on the rare-earth element, showing metamagnetic anti-to-paramagnetic (AF to PM) transitions for Ho and Dy while a ferro-to-paramagnetic (FM to PM) transition is obtained for Gd. Novel MCE field dependence method [4] and conventional Banerjee's criterion have been used for distinguishing the order of the transition: samples with Ho and Dy are found to undergo first-order phase transition whereas a second order phase transition is observed for the one with Gd. Fig.1 depicts the temperature dependence of the isothermal entropy change (ΔSiso) for a magnetic field change of 0-5 T for Ho and Gd samples. The two compounds show significant values of 10.1 and 9.1 J kg-1 K-1 at 26 and 75 K, close to the liquefaction temperatures of H2 and N2, respectively.

![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/f4b22391b23280e34c4bc60b9a3ec65c.jpg)

The temperature dependence of isothermal entropy change for Ho6Co2Ga and Gd6Co2Ga compounds whose crystal structures belong to Ho6Co2Ga-type.

Cryogenic magnetocaloric effect and thermomagnetic transitions in RE6Co2Ga (RE = Ho, Dy or Gd) compounds

**Session chairs:** Ramanathan Mahendiran, National University of Singapore and Sunil Nair, IISER



FOD - Thermoelectrics and Magnetocalorics

technical paper

The 15th Joint MMM-INTERMAG Conference (2022 Joint) is sponsored jointly by AIP Publishing and the IEEE Magnetics Society. Members of the international scientific and engineering communities interested in recent developments in fundamental and applied magnetism are invited to attend and contribute to the technical sessions. The technical program will include invited and contributed papers in oral and poster sessions, invited symposia, a plenary session, and an evening session, with about 1500 presentations overall. This Conference provides an outstanding opportunity for worldwide participants to meet their colleagues and collaborators and discuss developments in all areas of magnetism research.

The 2022 Joint Conference will offer both in-person and prerecorded on-demand content.

For tickets to the event, please register at the following link: https://magnetism.org/register

Please register for the Joint MMM-Intermag conference to join the event.

2022 Joint MMM-INTERMAG

This Conference provides an outstanding opportunity for worldwide participants to meet their colleagues and collaborators and discuss developments in all areas of magnetism research.

Carlos Romero-Muñiz

1

Presentations

Cryogenic magnetocaloric effect and thermomagnetic transitions in RE6Co2Ga (RE = Ho, Dy or Gd) compounds