Colossal and reversible barocaloric effect in liquid-solid-transition materials n-alkanes

Jianchao Lin, Peng Tong (), Kai Zhang, Kun Tao, Wenjian Lu (), Xianlong Wang (), Xuekai Zhang, Wenhai Song and Yuping Sun
Additional contact information
Jianchao Lin: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Peng Tong: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Kai Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Kun Tao: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wenjian Lu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xianlong Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xuekai Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Wenhai Song: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yuping Sun: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Emerging caloric cooling technology provides a green alternative to conventional vapor-compression technology which brings about serious environmental problems. However, the reported caloric materials are much inferior to their traditional counterparts in cooling capability. Here we report the barocaloric (BC) effect associated with the liquid-solid-transition (L-S-T) in n-alkanes. A low-pressure of ~50 MPa reversibly triggers an entropy change of ~700 J kg−1 K−1, comparable to those of the commercial refrigerants in vapor-based compression systems. The Raman study and theoretical calculations reveal that applying pressure to the liquid state suppresses the twisting and random thermal motions of molecular chains, resulting in a lower configurational entropy. When the pressure is strong enough to drive the L-S-T, the configurational entropy will be fully suppressed and induce the colossal BC effect. This work could open a new avenue for exploring the colossal BC effect by evoking L-S-T materials.

Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28229-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-28229-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28229-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().