Abstract
The magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of Nd5Si1.45Ge2.55 compound has been studied under high hydrostatic pressure up to 0.9 GPa. At ambient pressure, the Curie temperature (T C) and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) give values T C=58.1 K and−Δ S M=4.9 J/kg K. Both T C and MCE weakly increase with pressure. Using the value of compressibility (1.7*10−2 GPa−1), we showed that the values of dT C/d V and d|−Δ S M|/d V obtained from experiments under high pressure are sufficiently lower than those estimated from the x-dependence of the lattice cell volume of Nd5(Si x Ge1−x )4 compounds. It indicated that the changes of magnetocaloric properties cannot be explained only by volume effect.
Acknowledgements
The financial support of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (Grant no. 106/06/0368) is acknowledged.