Efeito da anisotropia sobre as propriedades magnetocalóricas de compostos metálicos: um estudo sistemático

Abstract

The magnetocaloric effect, i.e., heating and/or cooling of a magnetic material subjected to magnetic field variation is the basis of magnetic refrigeration. The magnetocaloric effect is caracterized by the entropy change in an isothermic process (ΔSiso) and by the temperature change in an adiabatic process (ΔTad). Despite the large number of experimental and theoretical works published in this area, there are many aspects of the magnetoccaloric effect which are not yet completely understood.In this work we discuss the effects of anisotropy on the magnetocaloric properties of a system of localized magnetic moments. In order to do that, we used a model of interacting spins with a uniaxial anisotropy term DS2 z , where D is a parameter. In this model, where the z axis is the easy magnetization direction, the magnitude of the anisotropy parameter and the direction of the applied magnetic field have an important role in the behavior of the magnetocaloric quantities ΔSiso and ΔTad. We perform a systematic study for a system with J = 1 by applying the magnetic field in different directions. The results show that, when the magnetic field is applied in the z direction, the magnetocaloric quantities have the normal behavior (positive values of ΔTad and negative values of ΔSiso with ΔB > 0). When the magnetic field is applied in a direction different from the z axis, the magnetocaloric quantities can show the inverse behavior (negative values of ΔTad and positive values of ΔSiso with ΔB > 0) or the anomalous behavior (change of sign in the curves of ΔTad and ΔSiso). Similar results have also been obtained for a system with J = 7=2.