Magnetocaloric effect and critical exponents of Fe77Co5.5Ni5.5Zr7B4Cu1: A detailed study

The critical exponents of the alloy have been determined with the Kouvel-Fisher method to predict the field dependence of the magnetic entropy change Delta S-M. The nonlinear fit of Delta S-M(H) to a power law provides a field exponent in perfect agreement with the predictions of the relevant scaling laws using the obtained critical exponent values. It is shown that possible discrepancies between these two methods for determining the field dependence of Delta S-M might arise due to a poor resolution in the temperature of the experiments. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3535191]