Title: Giant room-temperature barocaloric effects in PDMS rubber at low pressures,
Abstract: The barocaloric effect is still an incipient scientific topic, but it has
been attracting an increasing attention in the last years due to the promising
perspectives for its application in alternative cooling devices. Here, we
present giant values of barocaloric entropy change and temperature change
induced by low pressures in PDMS elastomer around room temperature. Adiabatic
temperature changes of 12.0 K and 28.5 K were directly measured for pressure
changes of 173 MPa and 390 MPa, respectively, associated with large normalized
temperature changes (~70 K GPa-1). From adiabatic temperature change data, we
obtained entropy change values larger than 140 J kg-1 K-1. We found barocaloric
effect values that exceed those previously reported for any promising
barocaloric materials from direct measurements of temperature change around
room temperature. Our results stimulate the study of the barocaloric effect in
elastomeric polymers and broaden the pathway to use this effect in solid-state
cooling technologies.