Giant barocaloric effects in sodium hexafluorophosphate and hexafluoroarsenate

Zhang, Z.*; Hattori, Takanori; Song, R.*; Yu, D.*; Mole, R.*; Chen, J.*; He, L.*; Zhang, Z.*; Li, B.*

Journal of Applied Physics, 136(3), p.035105_1 - 035105_8, 2024/07

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0211085

Solid-state refrigeration using barocaloric materials is environmentally friendly and highly efficient, making it a subject of global interest over the past decade. Here, we report giant barocaloric effects in sodium hexafluorophosphate (NaPF) and sodium hexafluoroarsenate (NaAsF) that both undergo a cubic-to-rhombohedral phase transition near room temperature. We have determined that the low-temperature phase structure of NaPF is a rhombohedral structure with space group R and NaAsF, i.e., F, E, and A. The phase transition temperature varies with pressure at a rate of dT/dP = 250 and 310 K/GPa for NaPF and NaAsF. The pressure-induced entropy changes of NaPF and NaAsF are determined to be around 45.2 and 35.6J kgK, respectively. The saturation driving pressure is about 40 MPa. The pressure-dependent neutron powder diffraction suggests that the barocaloric effects are related to the pressure-induced cubic-to-rhombohedral phase transitions.

A One-third magnetization plateau phase as evidence for the Kitaev interaction in a honeycomb-lattice antiferromagnet

Shangguan, Y.*; Bao, S.*; Dong, Z.-Y.*; Xi, N.*; Gao, Y.-P.*; Ma, Z.*; Wang, W.*; Qi, Z.*; Zhang, S.*; Huang, Z.*; et al.

Nature Physics, 19(12), p.1883 - 1889, 2023/09

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02212-2

Two-dimensional quantum universality in the spin-1/2 triangular-lattice quantum antiferromagnet NaBaCo(PO)

Sheng, J.*; Wang, L.*; Candini, A.*; Jiang, W.*; Huang, L.*; Xi, B.*; Zhao, J.*; Ge, H.*; Zhao, N.*; Fu, Y.*; et al.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(51), p.e2211193119_1 - e2211193119_9, 2022/12

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211193119

Square and rhombic lattices of magnetic skyrmions in a centrosymmetric binary compound

Takagi, Rina*; Matsuyama, Naofumi*; Ukleev, V.*; Yu, L.*; White, J. S.*; Francoual, S.*; Mardegan, J. R. L.*; Hayami, Satoru*; Saito, Hiraku*; Kaneko, Koji; et al.

Nature Communications (Internet), 13, p.1472_1 - 1472_7, 2022/03

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29131-9

Colossal barocaloric effects in plastic crystals

Li, B.*; Kawakita, Yukinobu; Kawamura, Seiko; Sugahara, Takeshi*; Wang, H.*; Wang, J.*; Chen, Y.*; Kawaguchi, Saori*; Kawaguchi, Shogo*; Ohara, Koji*; et al.

Nature, 567(7749), p.506 - 510, 2019/03

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1042-5

Refrigeration is of vital importance for modern society for example, for food storage and air conditioning- and 25 to 30% of the world's electricity is consumed for refrigeration. Current refrigeration technology mostly involves the conventional vapour compression cycle, but the materials used in this technology are of growing environmental concern because of their large global warming potential. As a promising alternative, refrigeration technologies based on solid-state caloric effects have been attracting attention in recent decades. However, their application is restricted by the limited performance of current caloric materials, owing to small isothermal entropy changes and large driving magnetic fields. Here we report colossal barocaloric effects (CBCEs) (barocaloric effects are cooling effects of pressure-induced phase transitions) in a class of disordered solids called plastic crystals. The obtained entropy changes in a representative plastic crystal, neopentylglycol, are about 389 joules per kilogram per kelvin near room temperature. Pressure-dependent neutron scattering measurements reveal that CBCEs in plastic crystals can be attributed to the combination of extensive molecular orientational disorder, giant compressibility and highly anharmonic lattice dynamics of these materials. Our study establishes the microscopic mechanism of CBCEs in plastic crystals and paves the way to next-generation solid-state refrigeration technologies.

Melting of Pb charge glass and simultaneous Pb-Cr charge transfer in PbCrO as the origin of volume collapse

Yu, R.*; Hojo, Hajime*; Watanuki, Tetsu; Mizumaki, Masaichiro*; Mizokawa, Takashi*; Oka, Kengo*; Kim, H.*; Machida, Akihiko; Sakaki, Koji*; Nakamura, Yumiko*; et al.

Journal of the American Chemical Society, 137(39), p.12719 - 12728, 2015/10

https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b08216

no abstracts in English

Origin of dramatic oxygen solute strengthening effect in titanium

Yu, Q.*; Qi, L.*; Tsuru, Tomohito; Traylor, R.*; Rugg, D.*; Morris, J. W. Jr.*; Asta, M.*; Chrzan, D. C.*; Minor, A. M.*

Science, 347(6222), p.635 - 639, 2015/02

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260485

Given that solute atoms interact weakly with the long-range elastic fields of screw dislocations, it has long been accepted that solution hardening is only marginally effective in materials with mobile screw dislocations. This accepted wisdom has recently been questioned by first-principles calculations suggesting that solutes may interact much more strongly with the screw dislocation core. We report here the results of a combined experimental and computational study undertaken to elucidate the profound hardening effect of oxygen in pure hexagonally-close-packed structured -Ti. High resolution and in situ transmission electron microscopy nanomechanical characterization establish that the strengthening is due to the strong interaction between oxygen and the core of screw dislocations that mainly glide on prismatic planes. First-principles calculations of the screw dislocation core reveal a simple crystallographic source for the oxygen-dislocation interaction that is consistent with experimental observations. The distortion of the interstitial sites at the dislocation core creates a very strong but short-range repulsion for oxygen atoms. These mechanisms effectively pin the dislocation near the oxygen interstitial. These results establish a highly effective mechanism for strengthening by interstitial solutes that, contrary to prior understanding, may be significant in many structural alloys.

Diluted ferromagnetic semiconductor Li(Zn,Mn)P with decoupled charge and spin doping

Deng, Z.*; Zhao, K.*; Gu, B.; Han, W.*; Zhu, J. L.*; Wang, X. C.*; Li, X.*; Liu, Q. Q.*; Yu, R. C.*; Goko, Tatsuo*; et al.

Physical Review B, 88(8), p.081203_1 - 081203_5, 2013/08

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.88.081203

Test results of ITER conductors in the SULTAN facility

Bruzzone, P.*; Stepanov, B.*; Wesche, R.*; Mitchell, N.*; Devred, A.*; Nunoya, Yoshihiko; Tronza, V.*; Kim, K.*; Boutboul, T.*; Martovetsky, N.*; et al.

Proceedings of 24th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (FEC 2012) (CD-ROM), 8 Pages, 2013/03

http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/physics/FEC/FEC2012/papers/431_ITR25.pdf

Starting March 2007, over 60 ITER cable-in-conduit conductors (CICC) have been tested in the SULTAN test facility, Switzerland. For the NbTi CICC, the results confirm the prediction from the strand data, which are made taking the peak field over the conductor cross section as operating field. All the NbTi samples passed the supplier qualification phase. For the NbSn CICC, the performance prediction is not straightforward because of the irreversible degradation caused by filament damage occurring during cyclic loading. At the first run of the test campaign, the performance of all the NbSn samples largely meets the target for all the tested samples. Contrary to the NbTi CICC case, the n-index of the transition is substantially lower than in the strands, providing evidence of irreversible degradation. The performance loss upon load cycles and thermal cycles has a broad range among the various conductor samples.

Li(Zn,Mn)As as a new generation ferromagnet based on a I-II-V semiconductor

Deng, Z.*; Jin, C. Q.*; Liu, Q. Q.*; Wang, X. C.*; Zhu, J. L.*; Feng, S. M.*; Chen, L. C.*; Yu, R. C.*; Arguello, C.*; Goko, Tatsuo*; et al.

Nature Communications (Internet), 2, p.1425_1 - 1425_5, 2011/08

https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1425

In a prototypical ferromagnet (Ga,Mn)As based on a III-V semiconductor, substitution of divalent Mn atoms into trivalent Ga sites leads to severely limited chemical solubility and metastable specimens available only as thin films. The doping of hole carriers via (Ga,Mn) substitution also prohibits electron doping. To overcome these difficulties, Masek et al. theoretically proposed systems based on a I-II-V semiconductor LiZnAs, where isovalent (Zn,Mn) substitution is decoupled from carrier doping with excess/deficient Li concentrations. Here we show successful synthesis of Li(ZnMn)As in bulk materials. We reported that ferromagnetism with a critical temperature of up to 50 K is observed in nominally Li-excess compounds, which have p-type carriers.