The efficient use of reversible thermal effects in magnetocaloric, electrocaloric, and elastocaloric materials is a promising avenue that can lead to a substantially increased efficiency of refrigeration and heat pumping devices, most importantly, those used in household and commercial cooling applications near ambient temperature. A proliferation in caloric material research has resulted in a wide array of materials where only the isothermal change in entropy in response to a handful of different field strengths over a limited range of temperatures has been evaluated and reported. Given the abundance of such data, there is a clear need for a simple and reliable figure of merit enabling fast screening and down-selection to justify further detailed characterization of those material systems that hold the greatest promise. Based on the analysis of several well-known materials that exhibit vastly different magnetocaloric effects, the Temperature averaged Entropy Change is introduced as a suitable early indicator of the material's utility for magnetocaloric cooling applications, and its adoption by the caloric community is recommended.

First-order magnetic transitions (FOMTs) with a large discontinuity in magnetization are highly sought in the development of advanced functional magnetic materials. Isosymmetric magnetoelastic FOMTs that do not perturb crystal symmetry are especially rare, and only a handful of material families, almost exclusively transition metal-based, are known to exhibit them. Yet, here we report a surprising isosymmetric FOMT in a rare-earth intermetallic, Eu₂In. What makes this transition in Eu₂In even more remarkable is that it is associated with a large latent heat and an exceptionally high magnetocaloric effect in low magnetic fields, but with tiny lattice discontinuities and negligible hysteresis. An active role of the Eu-5d and In-4p states and a rather unique electronic structure borne by In to Eu charge transfer, altogether result in an unusual exchange mechanism that both sets the transition in motion and unveils an approach toward developing specific magnetic functionalities ad libitum.

We report on calorimetric measurements under hydrostatic pressure that enabled us to determine the barocaloric effect in ${\text{Gd}}_5{\text{Si}}_2{\text{Ge}}_2$ . The values for the entropy change for moderate pressures compare favourably to those corresponding to the magnetocaloric effect in this compound. Entropy data are complemented with direct measurements of the adiabatic pressure-induced temperature change.