  Over the last two decades, the research activities on magnetocalorics have
been exponentially increased leading to the discovery of a wide category of
materials including intermetallics and oxides. Even though the reported
materials were found to show excellent magnetocaloric properties on laboratory
scale, only a restricted family among them could be upscaled toward industrial
levels and implemented as refrigerants in magnetic cooling devices. On the
other hand, in the most of reported reviews, the magnetocaloric materials are
usually discussed in terms of their adiabatic temperature and entropy changes,
which is not enough to get more insight about their large scale applicability.
In this review, not only the fundamental properties of recently reported
magnetocaloric materials are discussed but also their thermodynamic performance
in functional devices. The reviewed families particularly include Gd1-xRx
alloys, LaFe13-xSix, MnFeP1-xAsx and R1-xAxMnO3 based compounds. Other relevant
practical aspects such as mechanical stability, synthesis and corrosion issues
are discussed. In addition, the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters that play a
crucial role in the control of magnetic and magnetocaloric properties are
regarded. In order to reproduce the needed magnetocaloric parameters, some
practical models are proposed. Finally, the concepts of the rotating
magnetocaloric effect and multilayered magnetocalorics are introduced.
