Colossal barocaloric effect in GdCl3-doped H2O for sustainable cooling
Abstract H 2 O exists everywhere and its huge latent heat across ice-water phase transition empowers it to be a potential candidate for barocaloric refrigeration applications. Here we report a colossal and reversible barocaloric effect (BCE) in doped H 2 O, where the large hysteresis caused by supercooling is solved by adding 1.33 wt% GdCl 3 . Thereby the reversible entropy change ΔS r ∼728 J kg -1 K -1 has been demonstrated under a low pressure of 0.1 GPa and a more attractive colossal one (1018 J kg -1 K -1 ) can be achieved at 0.16 GPa, exceeding those of all other BCE materials and most of the harmful Freon in vapor compression refrigeration. Neutron measurements combined with molecular dynamics simulations demonstrated that the colossal BCE originates from the breakage/formation of H-bonds in H 2 O. Phonon density of states and Raman spectra validate the change of H-bonds from perspective of dynamics. The super BCE performance and the ubiquitous, non-toxic characters make H 2 O attractive as barocaloric refrigerant for sustainable cooling, more importantly, it is inferred that H-bond engineering can be an attractive approach for designing novel caloric materials.
Authors
- Wen Yin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9180-3025)
- Jirong Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4531-4794)
- Fengxia Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0383-0213)
- Yi Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1279-5491)
- Yue Kan
- Baogen Shen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4819-1806)
- Bingbo Wei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2120-6895)
- Lunhua He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0531-2148)
- Yunzhong Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8368-5823)
- Jiazheng Hao
- Jing Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5458-6711)
- Q. Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8290-0517)
- Changqing Jin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8097-9156)
- Jiantao Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1929-3339)
- Zhiguo Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8242-4784)
- Xianran Xing (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-8886)
- Wei Zhai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7791-9048)
- Bo Su
- Feiran Shen
- Tongyun Zhao
Institutions
- Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- China Spallation Neutron Source (CN)
- Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (CN)
- Jiangxi Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Institute of Physics (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology (CN)
- University of Science and Technology Beijing (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- NPG Asia Materials
- Published
- 2025-10-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41427-025-00619-2
- Primary Topic
- Thermal Expansion and Ionic Conductivity
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Northwestern University
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Northwestern Polytechnical University
- Ministry of Education, India
- University of Science and Technology Beijing
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Institute of Solid State Chemistry, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences