Advances in Magnetocaloric Effect Materials

Dear Colleagues,

It is known that the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) is usually implemented in magnetic refrigeration, a promising method that enables us to fully suppress the harmful fluorinated refrigerants used by conventional systems. This cooling (heating) technique has also the advantage of presenting a potentially higher thermodynamic efficiency while covering a wide range of applications such as heat pumps, air-conditioning systems, domestic coolers, space industry, scientific instruments, and the liquefaction of gases. Additionally, the MCE could be used in many other applications, such as cancer treatment and drug delivery.

For the commercialization of MCE -based systems, it is necessary to develop affordable magnetocaloric materials with outstanding thermal effects that can be generated under low magnetic fields over a wide temperature range. In this way, multiferroic compounds combining several degrees of freedom are of great importance due to their potential ability to provide cooperative caloric effects. Moreover, the considered candidates must present additional practical properties such as long-term mechanical and chemical stabilities, negligible hysteresis, and safe constituent elements. On the other hand, a parallel effort must be dedicated to the design of competitive magnetocaloric devices with reduced cost and weight.

In the present Special Issue, we invite scientists and engineers to submit papers that discuss both fundamental and practical aspects of magnetocaloric/multicaloric materials as well as their implementation in functional devices.

The potential topics include but are not limited to:

- Magnetocaloric materials;

- Multicaloric effects in solid-state materials;

- Growth techniques for magnetocaloric materials;

- Magnetic cooling devices;

- AMR (active magnetic refrigeration) thermodynamic cycles;

- Corrosion phenomena, mechanical brittleness and hysteresis issues;

- Electronic structure and theoretical models;

- Anisotropic magnetocaloric effects.

Prof. Dr. Mohamed Balli
Prof. Dr. Daniel Fruchart
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Magnetocaloric effect
• Bulk materials
• Thin films
• Nanoparticles
• Growth techniques
• Crystalline structure
• Magnetism
• Magnetocaloric devices
• AMR cycles
• Multicaloric effects