Magnetocaloric effect and nature of magnetic transition in low dimensional DyCu2

In this manuscript, we propose a method to prepare small flakes of DyCu2. On top of that we also report on the magnetocaloric effect and nature of magnetic transition of a strongly anisotropic DyCu2 in its low dimension. Magnetization measurements were carried out in the temperature range of 5-100 K and up to the maximum magnetic field strength of 50 kOe. Magnetic entropy change (Delta S-M) is estimated using the well-known Maxwell's equations and is found to be -4.31 J/kg-K. Indeed, the Delta S-M peak broadened marginally compared with its bulk DyCu2 and such a broadening can be attributed to significant increase in the total grain boundary volume. As these small flakes consists larger DSM values at temperatures higher than the Neel temperature (T-N), one can use them as a magnetic refrigerant material in a broad temperature range. We also plotted the M-2 vs. H/M (which are called as the Arrott plots) in order to find the nature of magnetic transition. Arrott plots infer that indeed there exists nonlinearity in M-2 vs. H/M behavior and such nonlinear behavior is ascribed to the random anisotropy or a random field that is present in the system