Table-like magnetocaloric behavior and enhanced cooling efficiency of a Bi-constituent Gd alloy wire-based composite

A novel type of bi-constituent wire composite was obtained by combining melt-extracted Gd50Al30Co20 and Gd55Al20Co25 microwire components with Curie temperature (TC) of 86 K and 110 K, respectively. For a field change of 5 T, the wire composite possesses a table-like feature spanning a temperature interval of 30 K with value of ∼8.6 J kg−1 K−1, and enhanced refrigerant capacity (RC) and relative cooling power (RCP) values of ∼680 J kg−1 and ∼863 J kg−1, respectively. The experimental results agree well with those calculated by a simple bi-composition model, demonstrating the possibility of designing wire-based composites with desirable magnetocaloric effects (MCE) for active magnetic refrigeration.