Characterization of magnetocaloric effect, magnetic ordering and electronic structure in the GdFe1-xCoxSi intermetallic compounds

GdFeSi silicide is a strong ferromagnet with Curie temperature (T-c) equal to 118 K. The substitution of cobalt for iron continuously suppresses ferromagnetism of the former compound, while it changes magnetic transition temperature nonlinearly. When the molar amount of cobalt reaches 0.4, the temperature of magnetic transition reaches minimal value i.e, 70 K. For larger amount of cobalt, magnetic transformation temperature rises well above 200 K and the antiferromagnetic interactions become dominant. In the present work we have found that the magnetic transformation temperature can be strictly correlated with the lattice constant c, which determines the distance between gadolinium layers as well as distance between neighboring gadolinium atoms in one layer. These results correspond to the change of amplitude of magnetocaloric effect which is being suppressed when the amount of cobalt increases. Adiabatic temperature change is equal to 2 K during the magnetic field cycle 0-1.7 T for pure GdFeSi, while no temperature change is observed during the same cycle for pure GdCoSi because of its antiferromagnetic character. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.