Understanding Barocaloric Effects in Soft Organic Salts

More than 20% of the world’s electricity is used for cooling. Current cooling technologies, however, rely on potent greenhouse gases to serve as refrigerants. Replacing these refrigerants with solid-state materials provides a sustainable alternative to conventional cooling technologies. This approach—referred to as solid-state barocaloric cooling—has the potential to provide cooling with zero direct emissions. However, there is currently a substantial lack of fundamental knowledge about barocaloric materials, and efforts to investigate the microscopic mechanisms for barocaloric effects are in their infancy. Here, we propose quasi-elastic neutron scattering studies on dialkylammonium halide salts, which are a novel class of barocaloric materials recently identified by my research group. This project aims to probe dynamics to reveal the molecular origin of their large barocaloric effects.