相关论文: Giant barocaloric effects in natural rubber: A rel…
High-entropy order-disorder phase transitions can be used for efficient and eco-friendly barocaloric solid-state cooling. Here the barocaloric effect is reported in an archetypal plastic crystal, adamantane. Adamantane has a colossal…
Soft robotics requires materials that are capable of large deformation and amenable to actuation with external stimuli such as electric fields. Energy harvesting, biomedical devices, flexible electronics and sensors are some other…
During the last few years, the increasing demand of energy for refrigeration applications has relived the interest of the scientific community in the study of alternative methods to the traditional gas-based refrigeration. Within this…
Cycling of a metallic glass between ambient and cryogenic temperatures can induce higher-energy states characteristic of glass formation on faster cooling. This rejuvenation, unexpected because it occurs at small macroscopic strains and…
Rubber elasticity is the archetype of the entropic force emerging from the second law of thermodynamics; numerous experimental and theoretical studies on natural and synthetic rubbers have shown that the elasticity originates mostly from…
An improved thermodynamic cycle is proposed, where the cooling effect of an electrocaloric refrigerant is enhanced by applying a reversed electric field. In contrast to conventional adiabatic heating or cooling by on-off cycles of the…
Thermally conductive polymers are of fundamental interest and can also be exploited in thermal management applications. Recent studies have shown stretched polymers can achieve high thermal conductivity. However, the transport mechanisms of…
We study the monodomain (single-crystal) nematic elastomer materials, all side-chain siloxane polymers with the same mesogenic groups and crosslinking density, but differing in the type of crosslinking. Increasing the proportion of long…
The fractocohesive length - the ratio between fracture toughness and work-to-fracture - provides a material-specific length scale that characterizes the size-dependent fracture behavior of pristine elastomers. However, its relevance to…
Amorphous solids, such as metallic, polymeric, and colloidal glasses, display complex spatiotemporal response to applied deformations. In contrast to crystalline solids, during loading, amorphous solids exhibit a smooth crossover from…
The emergence of the solid state in glass-forming materials upon cooling is accompanied by changes in both thermodynamic and viscoelastic properties and by a precipitous drop in fluidity. Here, we investigate changes in basic elastic…
The study deals with the Payne effect (a substantial decrease in the storage modulus of a particle-reinforced elastomer with an increase in the amplitude of mechanical oscillations). The influence of temperature, concentration of filler and…
The electrocaloric effect (ECE) offers a promising alternative to the traditional gas compressing refrigeration due to its high efficiency and environmental friendliness. The unusual negative electrocaloric effect refers to the adiabatic…
Magnetocaloric materials, which exploit reversible temperature changes induced by magnetic field variations, are promising for advancing energy-efficient cooling technologies. The potential integration of two-dimensional materials into…
Using Monte Carlo simulations we study cooling-rate effects in a three-dimensional Ising model with four-spin interaction. During coarsening, this model develops growing energy barriers which at low temperature lead to very slow dynamics.…
Higher efficiency, lower cost refrigeration is needed for both large and small scale cooling. Refrigerators using entropy changes during cycles of stretching or hydrostatically compression of a solid are possible alternatives to the…
The discovery of colossal barocaloric effects in neopentyl glycol (NPG) makes plastic crystals promising candidates for solid-state refrigerants with lower environmental impact than vapour compression fluids. Optimising operational…
Giant electrocaloric (EC) effect is observed in BaTiO3 multilayer thick film structure. The temperature change is as high as 4.0 oC under an applied electric field of 352 kV/cm. Most importantly, the EC effect is found to depend on the…
Effect of small additive molecules on the structural relaxation of polymer melts is investigated via molecular dynamics simulations. At a constant external pressure and a fixed number concentration of added molecules, the variation of…
Polymers are widely used in industry and in our daily life because of their diverse functionality, light weight, low cost and excellent chemical stability. However, on some applications such as heat exchangers and electronic packaging, the…