Atomistic simulation of barocaloric effects

TL;DR

This paper reviews atomistic simulation methods for the barocaloric effect, highlighting their role in advancing solid-state cooling technologies by predicting and understanding material responses to pressure.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of simulation strategies for barocaloric effects, including case studies demonstrating their application in predicting novel effects.

Findings

Atomistic simulations can effectively predict barocaloric effects in materials.

Different computational approaches offer trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency.

Case studies show potential for guiding experimental development of cooling materials.

Abstract

Due to critical environmental issues there is a pressing need to switch from current refrigeration methods based on compression of greenhouse gases to novel solid-state cooling technologies. Solid-state cooling capitalizes on the thermal response of materials to external fields named "caloric effect". The barocaloric (BC) effect driven by hydrostatic pressure is particularly promising from a technological point of view since typically presents larger cooling potential than other caloric variants (e.g., magnetocaloric and electrocaloric effects driven by magnetic and electric fields, respectively). Atomistic simulation of BC effects represents an efficient and physically insightful strategy for advancing solid-state cooling by complementing, and in some cases even guiding, experiments. Atomistic simulation of BC effects involves approaches ranging from computationally inexpensive force fields to computationally very demanding, but quantitatively accurate, first-principles methods. Here, we survey several methods and strategies involved in atomistic simulation of BC effects like the quasi-harmonic approximation and direct/quasi-direct estimation approaches. The Review finalizes with a collection of case studies in which some of these methods were employed to simulate and predict original BC effects.