Powdering and SPS sintering effect on the magnetocaloric properties of MnNiSi-based compounds

Abstract

Shaping process is crucial for the application of MM′X systems which are commonly fragile due to the large volume effect during phase transition. We adopted spark plasma sintering as a new method to produce MnNiSi-based bulks and investigated the variations of both structural and magnetic properties. The sintering process creates many micro-cracks inside the large particles and changes the residual strain in the small particles. It leads to the reduction of the entropy change, while the relative cooling power is increased by 7%. This work provides reference for further investigations about the effects of different shaping processes on the performance of MM′X systems.