Formability and Magnetocaloric Effect of a Gd27.5La27.5Al20Co20Fe5 Bulk Metallic Glass

A Gd27.5La27.5Al20Co20Fe5 bulk metallic glass (BMG) was synthesized by replacing 50% of the Gd element with the relatively cheap La element. The BMG has a rather high glass forming ability and the predicted critical diameter is about 7 mm by the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements. The BMG exhibits a medium range of refrigerant capacity (RC). The replacement of Gd with La leads to a slight reduction of the corresponding refrigerant efficiency of the alloy. However, the high value of magnetic entropy changes (-ΔS(m)peak) and low cost still indicates that the Gd27.5La27.5Al20Co20Fe5 BMG can be regarded as a good magnetic refrigerant candidate.