Magnetocaloric properties of cluster glass compound Pr2Ni0.95Si2.95

In this work, we report the magnetocaloric properties of a hexagonal intermetallic compound Pr2Ni0.95Si2.95 that exhibits spin cluster glass behaviour below 3.3 K. At lower temperature, the compound undergoes magnetic field induced metamagnetic transition beyond 5 kOe applied field value as inferred from the temperature dependence of magnetization at various fields as well as isothermal magnetization measurements. The temperature dependence of magnetic entropy change (- Delta S-M) has been calculated from the magnetization data and the maximum value is found to be 7.9 J/kg-K for a magnetic field change of 70 kOe. Interestingly, although the compound does not undergo any long range magnetic ordering, it exhibits considerable magnetocaloric effect in a temperature region much above the spin freezing due to the presence of short range magnetic correlation that persists up to much higher temperature. The suppression of short range interaction with the application of magnetic field has been argued to be responsible for such magnetic entropy change and adiabatic temperature change over a large temperature scale.