No Arabic abstract
Management of discarded tires is a compelling environmental issue worldwide. Although several approaches have been developed to recycle waste tire rubbers, their application in solid-state cooling is still unexplored. Considering the high barocaloric potential verified for elastomers, the use of waste tire rubber (WTR) as refrigerant in solid-state cooling devices is very promising. Here, we investigated the barocaloric effects in WTR and polymer blends made of vulcanized natural rubber (VNR) and WTR, in order to evaluate its feasibility for solid-state cooling technologies. The adiabatic temperature change and the isothermal entropy change reach giant values, as well as the performance parameters, being comparable or even better than most barocaloric materials in literature. Moreover, pure WTR and WTR-based samples also present a faster thermal exchange than VNR, consisting in an additional advantage of using these discarded materials. Thus, the present findings evidence the encouraging perspectives of employing waste rubbers in solid-state cooling based on barocaloric effect, contributing in both the recycling of polymers and the sustainable energy technology field.
We report a heat dynamics analysis of the electrocaloric effect (ECE) in commercial multilayer capacitors based on BaTiO3 dielectric, a promising candidate for applications as a solid state cooling device. Direct measurements of the time evolution of the samples temperature changes under different applied voltages allow us to decouple the contributions from Joule heating and from the ECE. Heat balance equations were used to model the thermal coupling between different parts of the system. Fingerprints of Joule heating and the ECE could be resolved at different time scales. We argue that Joule heating and the thermal coupling of the device to the environment must be carefully taken in to account in future developments of refrigeration technologies employing the ECE.
The frontiers of quantum electronics have been linked to the discovery of new refrigeration methods since the discovery of superconductivity at a temperature around $4,$K, enabled by the liquefaction of helium. Since then, the advances in cryogenics led to discoveries such as the quantum Hall effect and new technologies like superconducting and semiconductor quantum bits. Presently, nanoelectronic devices typically reach electron temperatures around $10,$mK to $100,$mK by commercially available dilution refrigerators. However, cooling electrons via the encompassing lattice vibrations, or phonons, becomes inefficient at low temperatures. Further progress towards lower temperatures requires new cooling methods for electrons on the nanoscale, such as direct cooling with nuclear spins, which themselves can be brought to microkelvin temperatures by adiabatic demagnetization. Here, we introduce indium as a nuclear refrigerant for nanoelectronics and demonstrate that solely on-chip cooling of electrons is possible down to $3.2pm0.1,$mK, limited by the heat leak via the electrical connections of the device.
Charge migration along DNA molecules has attracted scientific interest for over half a century. Reports on possible high rates of charge transfer between donor and acceptor through the DNA, obtained in the last decade from solution chemistry experiments on large numbers of molecules, triggered a series of direct electrical transport measurements through DNA single molecules, bundles and networks. These measurements are reviewed and presented here. From these experiments we conclude that electrical transport is feasible in short DNA molecules, in bundles and networks, but blocked in long single molecules that are attached to surfaces. The experimental background is complemented by an account of the theoretical/computational schemes that are applied to study the electronic and transport properties of DNA-based nanowires. Examples of selected applications are given, to show the capabilities and limits of current theoretical approaches to accurately describe the wires, interpret the transport measurements, and predict suitable strategies to enhance the conductivity of DNA nanostructures.
Metallic thin-walled round tubes are widely used as energy absorption elements. However, lateral splash of the round tubes under impact loadings reduces the energy absorption efficiency and may cause secondary damages. Therefore, it is necessary to assemble and fasten round tubes together by boundary constraints and/or fasteners between tubes, which increases the time and labor cost and affects the mechanical performance of round tubes. In an effort to break through this limitation, a novel self-locked energy-absorbing system has been proposed in this paper. The proposed system is made up of thin-walled tubes with dumbbell-shaped cross section, which are specially designed to interlock with each other and thus provide lateral constraint under impact loadings. Both finite element simulations and impact experiment demonstrated that without boundary constraints or fasteners between tubes, the proposed self-locked energy-absorbing system can still effectively attenuate impact loads while the round tube systems fail to carry load due to the lateral splashing of tubes. Furthermore, the optimal geometric design for a single dumbbell-shaped tube and the optimal stacking arrangement for the system are discussed, and a general guideline on the structural design of the proposed self-locked energy absorbing system is provided.
Finding new ionic conductors that enable significant advancements in the development of energy-storage devices is a challenging goal of current material science. Aside of material classes as ionic liquids or amorphous ion conductors, the so-called plastic crystals (PCs) have been shown to be good candidates combining high conductivity and favourable mechanical properties. PCs are formed by molecules whose orientational degrees of freedom still fluctuate despite the material exhibits a well-defined crystalline lattice. Here we show that the conductivity of Li+ ions in succinonitrile, the most prominent molecular PC electrolyte, can be enhanced by several decades when replacing part of the molecules in the crystalline lattice by larger ones. Dielectric spectroscopy reveals that this is accompanied by a stronger coupling of ionic and reorientational motions. These findings, which can be understood in terms of an optimised revolving door mechanism, open a new path towards the development of better solid-state electrolytes.