Portuguese researchers at IFIMUP – FCUP (Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto) have recently published two peer-reviewed articles on the high-impact ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and Physical Review Applied journals, from the American Chemical and Physics Societies. These two articles are devoted to the development of negative thermal expansion materials and of novel methods to characterize the magnetocaloric effect and were pursued within the context of the Bilateral initiative funded by EEA Grants entitled “The IFI-IFE: bilateral initiative: Bridging the knowledge gap on nanostructured magnetocaloric materials”.
Tunable negative thermal expansion materials are highly desirable for the development of near-zero thermal expansion composites – meaning materials which exhibit nearly zero volume expansion/contraction under temperature changes. These are of high importance for a variety of applications from micro-devices, large telescopes, dentistry, sensors to fuel cells.
In their turn, magnetocaloric materials are of great technological importance as they are the basis of an alternative, eco-friendly and more efficient refrigeration technology – magnetic refrigeration.
The article entitled “Tailoring Negative Thermal Expansion via Tunable Induced Strain in La–Fe–Si-Based Multifunctional Material” can be found here
Whereas the article entitled “Direct Measurement of the Magnetocaloric Effect through Time-Dependent Magnetometry” can be found here.
Figure 1: Graphical abstract of the article “Tailoring Negative Thermal Expansion via Tunable Induced Strain in La–Fe–Si-Based Multifunctional Material”.
Figure 2: Schematic illustration of the physical process used in this novel method to estimate the adiabatic temperature change of a magnetocaloric material.