April 22 - 26, 2024
Seattle, Washington
May 7 - 9, 2024 (Virtual)

Event Supporters

2024 MRS Spring Meeting
EL07.13.05

Novel Photocaloric Effects in Archetypal Ferroelectrics for Solid-State Cooling Applications

When and Where

Apr 26, 2024
2:15pm - 2:30pm
Room 342, Level 3, Summit

Presenter(s)

Co-Author(s)

Claudio Cazorla1

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya1

Abstract

Claudio Cazorla1

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya1
Solid-state cooling represents an energy efficient and ecologically friendly solution to the environmental problems posed by conventional refrigeration technologies based on compression cycles of greenhouse gases [1-3]. Upon small and moderate magnetic, electric and/or mechanical field shifts, promising caloric materials experience large adiabatic temperature variations (|ΔT|~1-10 K) as a result of phase transformations entailing large isothermal entropy changes (|ΔS|~10-100 J K<sup>−1</sup>kg<sup>−1</sup>). Solid-state cooling relies on such caloric effects to engineer multi-step refrigeration cycles. Nevertheless, conventional magneto-, electro- and mechano-caloric effects present a series of critical drawbacks that keep hindering their practical implementation in commercial refrigeration devices. For example, operation temperature conditions should be close to zero-bias transition points, since otherwise the required driving fields grow unfeasibly too large, but these only serendipitously occur at ambient conditions. Here, we will show, based on advanced first-principles simulation methods, that macroscopic light-driven phase transitions in ferroelectrics have the potential to overcome such a materials selection limitation. In particular, we demonstrate for the archetypal ferroelectric KNbO<sub>3</sub> the existence of giant photocaloric effects (i.e., |ΔT|~10 K and |ΔS|~100 J K<sup>−1</sup>kg<sup>−1</sup>), that is, induced by light absorption, over a vast temperature span of several hundreds of Kelvin containing room temperature. Our results can be qualitatively generalized to other ferroelectrics displaying similar types of ferroelectric to paraelectric phase transitions [4].<br/><br/><br/>[1] I. Takeuchi and K. Sandeman, Phys. Today 68, 48 (2015)<br/>[2] C. Cazorla, Appl. Phys. Rev. 6, 041316 (2019)<br/>[3] C. Menéndez-Muñiz, R. Rurali and C. Cazorla, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 25, 17450 (2023)<br/>[4] C. Paillard, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 087601 (2019)

Symposium Organizers

John Heron, University of Michigan
Morgan Trassin, ETH Zurich
Ruijuan Xu, North Carolina State University
Di Yi, Tsinghua University

Symposium Support

Gold
ADNANOTEK CORP.

Bronze
Arrayed Materials (China) Co., Ltd.
NBM Design, Inc.

Session Chairs

Kevin Crust
Aileen Luo

In this Session