Ms Paromita Mukherjee

Exploring the viability of complex lanthanide oxides for magnetic cooling

Cooling to low temperatures is essential for scientific research as well as other applications like MRI scanners, quantum computing etc. The usual cryogen, liquid helium, requires constant supply to replace the amount lost through gas formation and is fast becoming scarce. An alternative to this is magnetic cooling using geometrically frustrated magnets containing lanthanide ions.                                 My research would involve preparation of such samples, structure analysis using powder X-Ray diffraction and measurement of thermomagnetic properties such as heat capacity, magnetic susceptibility, magnetisation to evaluate the magnetocaloric effect in various complex lanthanide oxides.