Ideal Adsorption Isotherm Behavior for Cooling Applications.

Purely heat-driven refrigeration has the potential for high primary-energy efficiency, especially when powered by waste heat or solar thermal sources. This paper presents a novel expression for the ideal adsorption step location as a function of operating conditions. This methodology is then applied to a hypothetical stepwise material to evaluate its intrinsic efficiency.

Characterization of Adsorption Enthalpy of Novel Water-Stable Zeolites and Metal-Organic Frameworks.

Water adsorption is becoming increasingly important for many applications including thermal energy storage, desalination, and water harvesting. To develop such applications, it is essential to understand both adsorbent-adsorbate and adsorbate-adsorbate interactions, and also the energy required for adsorption/desorption processes of porous material-adsorbate systems, such as zeolites and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). In this study, we present a technique to characterize the enthalpy of adsorption/desorption of zeolites and MOF-801 with water as an adsorbate by conducting desorption experiments with conventional differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA).

Large Thermal Conductivity Differences between the Crystalline and Vitrified States of DMSO with Applications to Cryopreservation.

Thermal conductivity of dimethyl-sulfoxide (DMSO) solution is measured in this study using a transient hot wire technique, where DMSO is a key ingredient in many cryoprotective agent (CPA) cocktails. Characterization of thermal properties of cryoprotective agents is essential to the analysis of cryopreservation processes, either when evaluating experimental data or for the design of new protocols. Also presented are reference measurements of thermal conductivity for pure water ice and glycerol.

Vibrational mismatch of metal leads controls thermal conductance of self-assembled monolayer junctions.

We present measurements of the thermal conductance of self-assembled monolayer (SAM) junctions formed between metal leads (Au, Ag, Pt, and Pd) with mismatched phonon spectra. The thermal conductance obtained from frequency domain thermoreflectance experiments is 65 ± 7 MW/m(2) K for matched Au-alkanedithiol-Au junctions, while the mismatched Au-alkanedithiol-Pd junctions yield a thermal conductance of 36 ± 3 MW/m(2) K. The experimental observation that junction thermal conductance (per molecule) decreases as the mismatch between the lead vibrational spectra increases, paired with results from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, suggest that phonons scatter elastically at the metal-SAM interfaces.

Tunable electrical and thermal transport in ice-templated multilayer graphene nanocomposites through freezing rate control.

We demonstrate tunable electrical and thermal conductivities through freezing rate control in solution-based nanocomposites. For a prototypical suspension of 1 vol % multilayer graphene suspended in hexadecane, the solid-liquid electrical conductivity contrast ratio can be tuned from 1 to 4.5 orders of magnitude for freezing rates between 10(2) and 10(-3) °C/min.

Improved 3-omega measurement of thermal conductivity in liquid, gases, and powders using a metal-coated optical fiber.

A novel 3ω thermal conductivity measurement technique called metal-coated 3ω is introduced for use with liquids, gases, powders, and aerogels. This technique employs a micron-scale metal-coated glass fiber as a heater/thermometer that is suspended within the sample. Metal-coated 3ω exceeds alternate 3ω based fluid sensing techniques in a number of key metrics enabling rapid measurements of small samples of materials with very low thermal effusivity (gases), using smaller temperature oscillations with lower parasitic conduction losses.