Giant and isotropic low temperature magnetocaloric effect in magnetic semiconductor EuSe

Abstract

We present the giant and isotropic magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in antiferromagnetic semiconductor EuSe. Near the transition temperature TN = 4.6 K, the maximum value of the magnetic entropy change (−ΔSmmax) and the relative cooling power of EuSe for a field change of 5 T are evaluated to be 37.5 J kg−1 K−1 and 580 J kg−1, respectively, based on the magnetization and specific heat data. The −ΔSmmax value of EuSe obtained in this work is the largest among the low temperature (<20 K) magnetic refrigerant materials reported so far, which is even larger than that of the best known room temperature giant MEC materials.