Barocaloric Plastic Crystals for Sustainable Cooling

Half of the world’s CO₂ emissions can be attributed to heating and cooling [1]. This is primarily due to heating with natural gas and cooling with compression of greenhouse gases, which are neither environmentally friendly nor energy efficient. Therefore there is great interest in developing solid-state heat pumps that can replace these environmentally damaging technologies. During this talk I will describe our work on mechanically responsive barocaloric organic plastic crystals, and on cooling prototypes based on these materials.

[1] Climate change: science and solutions low-carbon heating and cooling, Royal Society, 2021.