Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Guzman-Verri, Gian G.

Publications and source records attributed to Guzman-Verri, Gian G..

Device for cooling fluid, method for cooling fluid

The invention provides a method for cooling fluid having the steps of supplying a fluid at a first temperature T1, raising the temperature of the fluid to a second temperature T2 through contact with an electric field, contacting the fluid with a heat exchanger to decrease its temperature to a third temperature T3, removing the electric field to decrease the temperature of the fluid to a fourth temperature T4, and applying a heat load to the fluid to increase the temperature of the fluid to T1. Also provided is a system for cooling fluid having a closed loop having a first region subject to an electric field, a second region in contact with a heat exchanger, a third region remote from the electric field, and a fourth region contacting a heat load.

Guzman-Verri, Gian G.↗

Random electric field instabilities of relaxor ferroelectrics

Relaxor ferroelectrics are complex oxide materials which are rather unique to study the effects of compositional disorder on phase transitions. Here, we study the effects of quenched cubic random electric fields on the lattice instabilities that lead to a ferroelectric transition and show that, within a microscopic model and a statistical mechanical solution, even weak compositional disorder can prohibit the development of long-range order and that a random field state with anisotropic and power-law correlations of polarization emerges from the combined effect of their characteristic dipole forces and their inherent charge disorder. As a result, we compare and reproduce several key experimental observations in the well-studied relaxor PbMg 1/3 Nb 2/3 O 3 –PbTiO 3 .

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Large isotropic negative thermal expansion above a structural quantum phase transition

Perovskite structured materials contain myriad tunable ordered phases of electronic and magnetic origin with proven technological importance and strong promise for a variety of energy solutions. An always-contributing influence beneath these cooperative and competing interactions is the lattice, whose physics may be obscured in complex perovskites by the many coupled degrees of freedom which makes these systems interesting. Here we report signatures of an approach to a quantum phase transition very near the ground state of the nonmagnetic, ionic insulating, simple cubic perovskite material ScF3 and show that its physical properties are strongly effected as much as 100 K above the putative transition. Spatial and temporal correlations in the high-symmetry cubic phase determined using energy- and momentum-resolved inelastic X-ray scattering as well as X-ray diffraction reveal that soft mode, central peak and thermal expansion phenomena are all strongly influenced by the transition.

Handunkanda, Sahan Uddika↗