Handbook of Magnetic Materials, Volume 29, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters written by an international board of authors on topics such as spin-orbit torque. - Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors - Presents the latest release in the Handbook of Magnetic Materials series

This book guides beginners in the areas of thin film preparation, characterization, and device making, while providing insight into these areas for experts. As chemically deposited metal oxides are currently gaining attention in development of devices such as solar cells, supercapacitors, batteries, sensors, etc., the book illustrates how the chemical deposition route is emerging as a relatively inexpensive, simple, and convenient solution for large area deposition. The advancement in the nanostructured materials for the development of devices is fully discussed.

This book provides the latest research on a new alternative form of technology, the magnetocaloric energy conversion. This area of research concerns magnetic refrigeration and cooling, magnetic heat pumping and magnetic power generation. The book’s systematic approach offers the theoretical basis of magnetocaloric energy conversion and its various sub domains and this is supported with the practical examples. Besides these fundamentals, the book also introduces potential solutions to engineering problems in magnetocalorics and to alternative technologies of solid state energy conversion. The aim of the book is therefore to provide engineers with the most up-to-date information and also to facilitate the understanding, design and construction of future magnetocaloric energy conversion devices. The magnetocaloric energy conversion represents an alternative to compressor based refrigerators and heat pumps. It is a serious alternative to power generation with low enthalpy heat sources. This green technology offers an opportunity to use environmentally friendly solid refrigerants and the potentially high energy efficiency follows the trends of future energy conversion devices. This book is intended for postgraduate students and researchers of refrigeration, heat pumping, power generation alternatives, heat regenerators and advanced heat transfer mechanisms.

This series of books, which is published at the rate of about one per year, addresses fundamental problems in materials science. The contents cover a broad range of topics from small clusters of atoms to engineering materials and involves chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering, with length scales ranging from Ångstroms up to millimeters. The emphasis is on basic science rather than on applications. Each book focuses on a single area of current interest and brings together leading experts to give an up to date discussion of their work and the work of others. Each article contains enough references that the interested reader can access the relevant literature. Thanks are given to the Center for Fundamental Materials Research at Michigan State University for supporting this series. M. F. Thorpe, Series Editor E mail: thorpe@pa. msu. edu V PREFACE This book records invited lectures given at the workshop on Physics of Manganites, held at Michigan State University, July 26 29, 1998. Doped manganites are an interesting class of compounds that show both metal insulator and ferromagnetic to paramagnetic transitions at the same temperature. This was discovered in the early 1950s by Jonker and van Santen and basic theoretical ideas were developed by Zener (1951), Anderson and Hasegawa (1955), and deGennes (1960) to explain these transitions and related interesting observations.