No Arabic abstract
There is currently great interest in replacing the harmful volatile hydrofluorocarbon fluids used in refrigeration and air-conditioning with solid materials that display magnetocaloric, electrocaloric or mechanocaloric effects. However, the field-driven thermal changes in all of these caloric materials fall short with respect to their fluid counterparts. Here we show that plastic crystals of neopentylglycol (CH3)2C(CH2OH)2 display unprecedentedly large pressure-driven thermal changes near room temperature due to molecular reconfiguration, and that these changes are comparable with those exploited commercially in hydrofluorocarbons. Our discovery of colossal barocaloric effects in a plastic crystal should bring barocaloric materials to the forefront of research and development in order to achieve safe environmentally friendly cooling without compromising performance.
We report magnetic, dielectric and magnetodielectric responses of pure monoclinic bulk phase of partially-disordered La2NiMnO6, exhibiting a spectrum of unusual properties and establish that this system intrinsically is a true multiglass with a large magnetodielectric coupling (8-20%) over a wide range of temperatures (150 - 300 K). Specifically, our results establish a unique way to obtain colossal magnetodielectricity, independent of any striction effects, by engineering the asymmetric hopping contribution to the dielectric constant via the tuning of the relative spin orientations between neighboring magnetic ions in a transition metal oxide system. We discuss the role of anti-site (Ni-Mn) disorder in emergence of these unusual properties.
The structural phase transitions of MF$_3$ (M=Al, Cr, V, Fe, Ti, Sc) metal trifluorides are studied within a simple Landau theory consisting of tilts of rigid MF$_6$ octahedra associated with soft antiferrodistoritive optic modes that are coupled to long-wavelength strain generating acoustic phonons. We calculate the temperature and pressure dependence of several quantities such as the spontaneous distortions, volume expansion and shear strains as well as $T-P$ phase diagrams. By contrasting our model to experiments we quantify the deviations from mean-field behavior and found that the tilt fluctuations of the MF$_6$ octahedra increase with metal cation size. We apply our model to predict giant barocaloric effects in Sc substituted TiF$_3$ of up to about $15,$JK$^{-1}$kg$^{-1}$ for modest hydrostatic compressions of $0.2,$GPa. The effect extends over a wide temperature range of over $140,$K (including room temperature) due to a large predicted rate $dT_c/dP = 723,$K GPa$^{-1}$, which exceeds those of typical barocaloric materials. Our results suggest that open lattice frameworks such as the trifluorides are an attractive platform to search for giant barocaloric effects.
We report on calorimetry under applied hydrostatic pressure and magnetic field at the antiferromagnetic (AFM)-ferromagnetic (FM) transition of Fe$_{49}$Rh$_{51}$. Results demonstrate the existence of a giant barocaloric effect in this alloy, a new functional property that adds to the magnetocaloric and elastocaloric effects previously reported for this alloy. All caloric effects originate from the AFM/FM transition which encompasses changes in volume, magnetization and entropy. The strong sensitivity of the transition temperatures to both hydrostatic pressure and magnetic field confers to this alloy outstanding values for the barocaloric and magnetocaloric strengths ($|Delta S|$/$Delta p$ $sim$ 12 J kg$^{-1}$ K $^{-1}$ kbar$^{-1}$ and $|Delta S|$/$mu_0Delta H$ $sim$ 12 J kg$^{-1}$ K$^{-1}$ T$^{-1}$). Both barocaloric and magnetocaloric effects have been found to be reproducible upon pressure and magnetic field cycling. Such a good reproducibility and the large caloric strengths make Fe-Rh alloys particularly appealing for solid-state cooling technologies at weak external stimuli.
The search for oxide-based room-temperature ferromagnetism has been one of the holy grails in condensed matter physics. Room-temperature ferromagnetism observed in Nb-doped SrTiO3 single crystals is reported in this Rapid Communication. The ferromagnetism can be eliminated by air annealing (making the samples predominantly diamagnetic) and can be recovered by subsequent vacuum annealing. The temperature dependence of magnetic moment resembles the temperature dependence of carrier density, indicating that the magnetism is closely related to the free carriers. Our results suggest that the ferromagnetism is induced by oxygen vacancies. In addition, hysteretic magnetoresistance was observed for magnetic field parallel to current, indicating that the magnetic moments are in the plane of the samples. The x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, the static time-of-flight and the dynamic secondary ion mass spectroscopy and proton induced x-ray emission measurements were performed to examine magnetic impurities, showing that the observed ferromagnetism is unlikely due to any magnetic contaminant.
In multiferroic BiFeO3 thin films grown on highly mismatched LaAlO3 substrates, we reveal the coexistence of two differently distorted polymorphs that leads to striking features in the temperature dependence of the structural and multiferroic properties. Notably, the highly distorted phase quasi-concomitantly presents an abrupt structural change, transforms from a hard to a soft ferroelectric and transitions from antiferromagnetic to paramagnetic at 360+/-20 K. These coupled ferroic transitions just above room temperature hold promises of giant piezoelectric, magnetoelectric and piezomagnetic responses, with potential in many applications fields.