Interstitial-nitrogen effect on phase transition and magnetocaloric effect in Mn(As,Si) (invited)" (2010). Ralph Skomski Publications. 67. The effect of interstitial nitrogen on the phase transition and magnetocaloric behavior of MnAs 1−x Si x N ␦ ͑x = 0.03, 0.06, and 0.09͒ is investigated. The interstitial nitrogen atoms cause the step-scanned x-ray diffraction peaks to shift toward lower angles and lower the Curie temperature, whereas silicon addition increases the Curie temperature to near

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... om temperature. The thermal hysteresis is reduced to nearly 0 in MnAs 1−x Si x N ␦ , which is beneficial to practical applications. For a field change of 5 T, the largest magnetic entropy change and refrigerant capacity are 14.6 J kg −1 K −1 at 247 K and 360 J kg −1 , which is slightly higher than the entropy change in the parent alloy. Finally, we briefly discuss the occurrence and origin of the "virgin effect" in MnAs.