Scalable Barocaloric Systems

Barocaloric effects in solids can be used to drive energy-efficient heating and cooling cycles, offering a promising alternative to vapor compression technology that relies on potent greenhouse gases. However, developing barocaloric systems that can be scaled to produce competitive and technologically meaningful power and efficiencies has been challenging. In this presentation, I will describe our latest efforts to develop a high-performance barocaloric cooling system. First, I will discuss how strong barocaloric effects that originate from hydrocarbon order–disorder transitions in layered organic and metal–organic materials [1, 2] can be leveraged to generate high thermal power in composite barocaloric refrigerants. I will highlight our efforts to elucidate key factors that influence hysteresis, thermal conductivity, and material longevity, with a focus on evaluating the tradeoff relationships between power density and energy density in barocaloric systems. Second, I will describe new mechanisms for driving large barocaloric effects at low pressures. Specifically, I will show how these new approaches unlock different types of system architectures and scaling laws that are critical to achieving high-performance barocaloric devices. Our approaches leverage the interface between materials chemistry and thermal engineering to create new opportunities in barocalorics.

References
[1] Seo, J.; McGillicuddy, R. M.; Slavney, A. H.; Zhang, S.; Ukani, R.; Yakovenko, A. A.; Zheng, S.-L.; Mason, J. A. “Colossal Barocaloric Effects with Ultralow Hysteresis in Two-Dimensional Metal–Halide Perovskites” Nature Communications 2022, 13, 2536.
[2] Seo, J.; Ukani, R.; Zheng, J.; Braun, J. D.; Wang, S.; Chen, F. E.; Kim, H. K.; Zhang, S.; Thai, C.; McGillicuddy, R. M.; Yan, H.; Vlassak, J.; Mason, J. A. “Barocaloric Effects in Dialkylammonium Halide Salts” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146, 2736.