Magnetic and magnetocaloric effect study of a polycrystalline Gd0.5Sr0.5-xCaxMnO3 compound.

The magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of polycrystalline Gd0.5Sr0.5-xCaxMnO3 (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5) compounds have been investigated. Depending upon the Ca and Sr proportions, fascinating magnetic ground states were observed in the Gd0.5Sr0.5-xCaxMnO3 compounds. Here, the dominating nature of the canted magnetic state (for the Gd0.5Ca0.5MnO3 compound) and glassy (disordered ferromagnetic) magnetic state (for the Gd0.5Sr0.5MnO3 compound) are observed. However, for the intermediate doped samples (x = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4), a competing nature is found in their magnetic and exchange bias properties. Additionally, in the low temperature region, a significantly large magnetocaloric effect is observed for all the samples. At a 70 kOe external magnetic field, the highest observed value of the magnetocaloric entropy change is 21.58 J kg-1 K-1 (for the Gd0.5Ca0.5MnO3 sample) and the lowest is 10.15 J kg-1 K-1 (for the Gd0.5Sr0.5MnO3 sample).