Abstract:
Caloric materials hold significant potential for refrigeration applications and efficient energy conversion,
including millikelvin/liquid hydrogen/room-temperature magnetic refrigeration, chip thermal
management/deep-space thermal management, magnetocaloric heat pumps, low-grade waste heat recovery, and thermomagnetic power generation. Recently, we have conducted a series of research studies [1-5] and discovered new materials for ultra-low-temperature magnetic refrigeration [1]. An experimental study on the modulation of barocaloric effect by magnetic fields in Ni 50Mn35In15 was reported [5]. Ab initio calculations theoretically elucidated the driving effects of single pressure, single magnetic field, and dual magnetic fields on the magneto-structural transition. A series of novel barocaloric materials [2] were investigated. For a 2D vdW material, a small pressure of 0.08 GPa could drive reversible enthalpy changes as high as 400 J kg⁻¹ K⁻¹, while a pressure of 0.1 GPa induced reversible adiabatic temperature changes of ~11 K. A giant electrocaloric effect driven by low magnetic fields has been discovered in molecular ferroelectrics [4]. A novel all-solid-state magnetic refrigeration device based on new principle of hybrid regeneration has been proposed [3] and experimentally verified.

[1] Wang BJ; Hu, FX*; Shen, BG*, et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2024, 146: 35016.
[2] Gao, YH; Hu, FX*; Shen, BG*, et al, Nature Commun. 2024, 15: 1838.
[3] Lin Y; Hu, FX*; Shen, BG*, et al, Innovation. 2024, 5: 100645.
[4] Lin Y; Hu, FX*; Shen, BG, et al, Nature Commun. 2025, 16: 4009.
[5] Hao, JZ; Hu, FX*; Shen, BG*, et al, Acta Mater. 2024, 265: 119596.