To present day, the maximum magnetocaloric effect (MCE) at room temperature for a magnetic field change of 5 T is 40 J/(kg K) for MnAs. In this Letter we present colossal MCE measurements on MnAs under pressure, reaching values up to 267 J/(kg K), far greater than the magnetic limit arising from the assumption of magnetic field independence of the lattice and electronic entropy contributions. The origin of the effect is the contribution to the entropy variation coming from the lattice through the magnetoelastic coupling.

The magnetocaloric effect (MCE) is the basis for magnetic refrigeration, and can replace conventional gas compression technology due to its superior efficiency and environment friendliness. MCE materials must exhibit a large temperature variation in response to an adiabatic magnetic-field variation and a large isothermal entropic effect is also expected. In this respect, MnAs shows the colossal MCE, but the effect appears under high pressures. In this work, we report on the properties of Mn(1-x)Fe(x)As that exhibit the colossal effect at ambient pressure. The MCE peak varies from 285 K to 310 K depending on the Fe concentration. Although a large thermal hysteresis is observed, the colossal effect at ambient pressure brings layered magnetic regenerators with huge refrigerating power closer to practical applications around room temperature.

No abstract

An absolute thermal lens method to determine fluorescence quantum efficiency and concentration quenching of solids is described in this work. The quantum efficiency of low silica calcium aluminate glasses doped with different concentrations of neodymium dioxide and melted under vacuum conditions to remove water has been measured by using mode-mismatched thermal lens spectrometry. It has been shown that the thermal lens signal amplitude is linearly dependent on neodymium concentrations up to 4.0 wt %, changing significantly from 4.5 to 5.0 wt %, indicating that there was quenching of the fluorescence only above 4.0 wt % neodymium dioxide. The quantitative treatment for the thermal lens effect provided the absolute value of the sample's fluorescence quantum efficiency. The technique is simple to perform and can be applied for a wide range of fluorescent materials. ͓S0163-1829͑98͒00714-0͔