Gadolinium is one of the most important materials used by us during attempts to construct an effective magnetocaloric cooling unit. Please read the basic facts about it.

Both gadolinium and some of its alloys or salts play a prominent role in magnetic cooling. In this refrigeration process, a magnetic substance becomes hotter when placed under certain external magnetic field, owing to the orientation of its magnetic dipoles. Inversely when the field is removed, and the substance thermally isolated, it cools down. By varying the magnetic field, and the sample’s insulation, one shuffles entropy between the material’s electronic spin system and other degrees of freedom.

Source: Magically magnetic gadolinium : Nature Chemistry : Nature Publishing Group

[bibtex file=”http://kmim.wm.pwr.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/gadolin.bib”]