# Investigating nucleation-driven phase transitions in neopentyl molecular crystals using infrared thermography and polarised light microscopy Source: [Investigating nucleation-driven phase transitions in neopentyl molecular crystals using infrared thermography and polarised light microscopy]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-04-15T05:00:18.272Z Authors: Frederic Rendell-Bhatti, Vinzent G. Hana, Csongor Joba, David Boldrin, Donald A. MacLaren Published: 2026-04-13T13:07:20.000Z ## Abstract Sustainable solid-state refrigerants based on barocaloric materials are often limited by thermal hysteresis associated with supercooling effects. Here, we present imaging methods to investigate and compare thermal behaviour and transition kinetics of the barocaloric molecular crystal neopentyl glycol (NPG) with those of a lightly doped derivative, NPG$\_{0.99}$PE$\_{0.01}$, which incorporates 1 mol % pentaerythritol (PE). We use temperature-dependent polarised light (PL) microscopy and infrared (IR) thermography to correlate phase transition kinetics and local heat-flow with the bulk thermodynamic response obtained from calorimetry. We show that the doped system exhibits reduced supercooling and thermal hysteresis, attributed to increased microstructural disorder and an increase in the number of nucleation events. These findings provide insight into the design of low-hysteresis barocaloric materials for high-efficiency solid-state cooling applications. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()