Nucleation and dynamics of the metamagnetic transition in magnetocaloric La(Fe,Mn,Si)13

Refrigeration cycle rates of the order of 15 Hz are desirable for efficient solid state based magnetocaloric cooling, placing an upper bound on the combined magnetic transition and the heat transfer times of the order of tens of msecs. We use microcalorimetry and magnetometry to probe the transition dynamics as a function of magnetic field sweep-rate, sample size, thermal environment, temperature and hydrostatic pressure in LaFe11.74Mn0.06Si1.20. Although second order caloric materials follow the magnetisation or demagnetisation driving field without lag, here we show that the field driven evolution of the first-order phase transition in La(Fe,Si)13-based compounds show temporal dynamics on timescales that are significantly longer than tens of msecs, associated with the thermal linkage within the sample and the linkage to the external bath. We observe that features associated with the first nucleation of the transition are field sweep rate independent, and from measurements of the latent heat we infer that the barriers to magnetisation and demagnetisation are of different magnitude. Increasing the temperature or applying hydrostatic pressure reduces the dynamic effects, suggestive of diminishing first-order character of the transition under these conditions