Structural, magnetic and magnetocaloric properties in Rare earth orthochromite (Sm, Ndand La)CrO3 for cooling product

Polycrystalline phase of SmCrO3, NdCrO3 and LaCrO3 orthochromites were synthetized with solid state reaction. The pure orthorhombic phases with space group Pnma (62) were been confirmed by X-Ray diffraction. In addition, the FTIR spectroscopy proved the formation Sm-O, Nd-O and La-O liaisons in SmCrO3, NdCrO3 and LaCrO3 respectively, and Cr-O and Cr-O-Cr liaisons in all our samples. The particles morphology and composition were seeing using the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The magnetic characterization was been performed by the Quantum Design XL-SQUID magnetometer in order to determine the magnetic transition type and transition temperature of each sample. We found that our samples exhibit a transition at 195 K, 65 K and 35 K for SmCrO3, NdCrO3 and LaCrO3 respectively. The magnetic entropy change (∆Sm) as the key parameter to evaluate the magnetocaloric effect is calculated. Our samples present a ∆Sm in the range of 0.11 and 0.25 J.kg-1.K-1 for an external magnetic field of 5 Tesla.