Magnetocaloric effect and refrigerant capacity in polycrystalline YCrO 3

Rare earth orthochromites (RCrO3) have attracted much interest in recent years due to their physical properties which arise from the orthorhombically distorted perovskite structure. They also show great potential application as multifunctional materials. In this work we present the results of structural, dc magnetisation measurements and magnetocaloric properties for YCrO3 hard magnet. The magnetocaloric effect was investigated by means of field dependence magnetisation measurements in a temperature range from 98K to 182K. The magnetic entropy change, −ΔSM=0.36Jkg−1K−1, and the refrigerant capacity, RC=7.1Jkg−1, was obtained near the transition temperature TN=140K, for applied fields up to 50kOe.