High-Performance Magnetic Refrigerant Featuring One-Dimensional Gd-O Chains and O-Gd3 Triangles.

Magnetic cooling at low temperature has attracted intensive interest in cryogenics research, which may become important as cooling medium for long-wave photon detectors to support space exploration. Here, we report a Gd-based quaternary magnetic refrigerant material, Gd5 BSi2 O13 , containing chains of face-shared GdO9 polyhedra and geometrically frustrated OGd3 triangles. Magnetic measurements indicate that Gd5 BSi2 O13 exhibits a large magnetocaloric effect (MCE) about 1.74 times that of the practical magnetic refrigerant GGG (-ΔSm =67.0 J kg-1  K-1 ). We analyzed the origin of the large MCE by comparing GdIII -containing compounds with different structures and concentrations of GdIII .