Giant volume magnetostriction in La0.85Ce0.15Fe12B6

We report the discovery of giant magnetostriction and huge negative thermal expansion (NTE) in itinerant-electron metamagnetic compound La0.85Ce0.15Fe12B6. This system presents multiple magnetic transformations, antiferromagnetic–ferromagnetic (AFM–FM) ferromagnetic–paramagnetic (FM–PM), driven by changes both external field temperature. The magnetic-field–dependent exhibits irreversible abrupt jumps at T ≤ 5 K, while it evolves smoothly with applied above K. A positive volume ΔV/V (20 6 T) = 0.80% is observed across field-induced first-order AFM–FM transition. It further revealed that FM–PM transition accompanied a remarkably large NTE coefficient linear αL −34 × 10−6 K−1 over temperature window ΔT ∼ 63