Solid-state refrigeration technology based on caloric effects are promising to replace the currently used vapor compression cycles. However, their application is restricted due to limited performances of caloric materials. Here, we have identified colossal barocaloric effects (CBCEs) in a class of disordered solids called plastic crystals. The obtained entropy changes are about 380 J kg -1 K -1 in the representative neopentylglycol around room temperature. Inelastic neutron scattering reveals that the CBCEs in plastic crystals are attributed to the combination of the vast molecular orientational disorder, giant compressibility and high anharmonic lattice dynamics. Our study establishes the microscopic scenario for CBCEs in plastic crystals and paves a new route to the next-generation solid-state refrigeration technology.

Perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 exhibits outstanding photovoltaic performances, but the understanding of the atomic motions remains inadequate even though they take a fundamental role in transport properties. Here, we present a complete atomic dynamic picture consisting of molecular jumping rotational modes and phonons, which is established by carrying out high-resolution time-of-flight quasi-elastic and inelastic neutron scattering measurements in a wide energy window ranging from 0.0036 to 54 meV on a large single crystal sample, respectively. The ultrafast orientational disorder of molecular dipoles, activated at ∼165 K, acts as an additional scattering source for optical phonons as well as for charge carriers. It is revealed that acoustic phonons dominate the thermal transport, rather than optical phonons due to sub-picosecond lifetimes. These microscopic insights provide a solid standing point, on which perovskite solar cells can be understood more accurately and their performances are perhaps further optimized.

As a generic property, all substances transfer heat through microscopic collisions of constituent particles . A solid conducts heat through both transverse and longitudinal acoustic phonons, but a liquid employs only longitudinal vibrations. As a result, a solid is usually thermally more conductive than a liquid. In canonical viewpoints, such a difference also serves as the dynamic signature distinguishing a solid from a liquid. Here, we report liquid-like thermal conduction observed in the crystalline AgCrSe. The transverse acoustic phonons are completely suppressed by the ultrafast dynamic disorder while the longitudinal acoustic phonons are strongly scattered but survive, and are thus responsible for the intrinsically ultralow thermal conductivity. This scenario is applicable to a wide variety of layered compounds with heavy intercalants in the van der Waals gaps, manifesting a broad implication on suppressing thermal conduction. These microscopic insights might reshape the fundamental understanding on thermal transport properties of matter and open up a general opportunity to optimize performances of thermoelectrics.

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Neutron and high-energy x-ray diffraction analyses of molten AgI have been performed and the partial structures are discussed in detail with the aid of the structural modelling procedure of the reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) technique by comparison with those of molten CuI and AgCl. It is well known that AgI and CuI have a superionic solid phase below the melting point, in which the cations favour a tetrahedral configuration, while solid AgCl has a rock-salt structure with an octahedral environment around both Ag and Cl atoms. Even in the molten states, there is a significant difference between superionic and non-superionic melts. The cation is located on the triangular plain formed by three iodine ions in molten AgCl and CuI, while molten AgCl favours a 90° Cl-Ag-Cl bond angle, which is understood to maintain a similar local environment to that in the solid state. The atomic configurations of the RMC model suggest that the cation distributions in superionic melts of CuI and AgI exhibit large fluctuations, while Ag ions in the non-superionic melts of AgCl are distributed much more uniformly.

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We are the first group to succeed in measuring the dynamic structure factor S(Q,ω) of liquid Si close to melting using high-resolution inelastic x-ray scattering. The spectra clearly demonstrate the existence of propagating short wavelength modes in the melt with a Q–ω relation similar to those in other liquid metal systems. A specific variation of the quasi-elastic line shape with increasing Q is observed close to the structure factor maximum. This observation is related to the onset of atomic correlations on the sub-picosecond timescale in the vicinity of a metal-to-insulator transition. Such observations have been made previously only in computer simulations of metallic systems with increasing covalent character. Our data provide the first experimental evidence for these ultrashort density correlations.

The time-of-flight (TOF) type near-backscattering spectrometer (n-BSS), DNA, with Si crystal analyzers was built and started operation in 2012 at the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF) of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). DNA is the first n-BSS with pulse shaping chopper installed at a spallation pulsed neutron source. It offers currently the highest energy-resolution of about 2.4 micro eV by operating a pulse shaping double-disk chopper at 225 Hz whose phase is optimized to the narrowest slit of 10 mm width. Energy resolution can be flexibly compromised with intensity during experiment by using two type slits with different widths and changing the copper frequency. An example of measurement with high energy-resolution under the condition that the pulse shaping chopper was operated is shown, where the limited measurable energy range was widely expanded by multi incident energy band technique. The experimental data demonstrate extremely high signal-to-noise ratio (~10 5) of this spectrometer.