Pulse heating and slip enhance charging of phase-change thermal batteries
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Article Date: 2026-01-07
Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09877-0
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Summary
The authors report a strategy that combines pulse heating with engineered liquid slip at interfaces to speed up the charging (melting) of phase-change thermal batteries. By using short, high-power heating pulses together with surfaces that promote slip or reduce contact resistance, they demonstrate substantially faster melt-front advance compared with steady heating and conventional solid–liquid contact configurations.
The work couples laboratory experiments and analysis to show how transient heat input and reduced interfacial resistance change the local melting dynamics, enhancing heat transfer into the phase-change material (PCM) and improving the device’s power capability without sacrificing stored energy density.
Key Points
- Pulsed heating delivers heat to the PCM in short bursts, producing faster local melting than equivalent steady heating at the same average power.
- Engineered slip (e.g. liquid-like or low-friction interfaces) reduces thermal-contact resistance and helps maintain close contact during melting, improving heat transfer.
- Combining pulse heating with slip yields a compound effect: faster charging rates and higher effective power density for latent heat storage devices.
- The approach targets the longstanding trade-off between energy density and charge/discharge rate in phase-change thermal batteries.
- Authors back findings with experiments and physical arguments that connect to close-contact melting and interfacial flow phenomena reported in recent literature.
Context and relevance
This paper sits at the intersection of thermal-energy storage, interfacial engineering and transient heat transfer. Rapid charging of PCMs is a major bottleneck for making thermal batteries practical for grid flexibility and industrial heat decarbonisation. The study links to ongoing research on close-contact melting, surface treatments, and high-power-density PCM composites, and suggests a potentially low-complexity route to improve charging power in real devices.
The findings are relevant to researchers and engineers working on seasonal and short-term thermal storage, heat-management for renewables and industrial process heat, and anyone exploring physical (rather than purely material) strategies to accelerate phase-change heat transfer.
Why should I read this
Quick version: it’s a neat, physical trick — short heat blasts plus slick surfaces make thermal batteries charge way faster. If you care about getting more power out of PCMs without reinventing the material, this paper saves you time by showing how to do it with clever heating and interface design.
Author style
Punchy: the paper is a crisp demonstration that non-material levers (transient heating profiles and interfacial slip) can unlock big performance gains. If you work on thermal storage or industrial heat, this isn’t just interesting — it’s potentially game-changing and worth a close read.