Abstract
We report the sol gel synthesis and impact of reduced dimensionality on the magnetocaloric properties of La0.6Ca0.4MnO3 manganite. The synthesized powders were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and magnetization measurements. The XRD results indicated that the La0.6Ca0.4MnO3 nanoparticles have single phase nature with orthorhombic structure. FE-SEM results suggested that the nanoparticles are agglomerated and crystallite size increases with the annealing temperature. Magnetization measurements show that the La0.6Ca0.4MnO3 nanoparticles exhibit transition temperature (T-c) below room temperature. The transition temperature was found to increase with the increasing the crystallite size. Maximum in magnetic entropy change, (Delta S-M)(max) shows interesting behaviour and was found to vary with the particle size. At magnetic field of 1 T, the value of (Delta S-M)(max) similar to 0.13 J/kg K was observed at 213 K for the sample annealed at 600 degrees C. Also, the increment in the value of (Delta S-M)(max) was observed at higher annealing temperature. This study shows that the magnetic entropy of pervoskite manganite can be tuned by tuning the crystallite size of the manganites.