With more than 20% of the world’s electricity currently used for cooling and a growing population demanding more comfortable living conditions amid an ever warming global climate, the need for sustainable cooling technologies is expected to increase dramatically over the next several decades. Most commercial cooling systems rely on vapor-compression cycles of environmentally harmful refrigerants that are prone to leakage. As an alternative, caloric effects can drive solid-state cooling cycles that feature a high energy efficiency and zero direct emissions, as well as faster start-up times, quieter operation, easier recyclability, and greater amenability to miniaturization than conventional vapor-compression technologies. Here, I will describe how pressure-induced thermal changes—barocaloric effects—mediated by order–disorder or spin-crossover phase transitions can be leveraged for solid-state cooling. In particular, I will discuss the structural and chemical factors that contribute to entropy changes, sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure, and hysteresis in a series of metal–organic materials that exhibit large barocaloric effects.

Barocaloric effects in metal–organic materials for solid-state cooling

ACS Spring 2022

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