Negative Thermal Expansion Materials

In everyday life, minute thermally-induced elongations are essentially invisible to the naked eye; but even minute expansions can fatally degrade device processing and performance in – for example – the semiconductor industry. Materials which, astonishingly, contract upon heating offer the great advantage of being able to tune the overall thermal expansion of composite materials or to act as thermal-expansion compensators. The development of these negative thermal expansion materials has advanced rapidly during the past fifteen years, and a wide variety of materials of differing types has now been identified, as well as a number of intriguing mechanisms which help to avoid the apparent inviolable tendency of size to increase with temperature. The present work is the most up-to-date summary of the current range of negative thermal expansion materials and of the associated mechanisms.

The development of these negative thermal expansion materials has advanced rapidly during the past fifteen years, and a wide variety of materials of differing types has now been identified, as well as a number of intriguing mechanisms which help to avoid the apparent inviolable tendency of size to increase with temperature. The present work is the most up-to-date summary of the current range of negative thermal expansion materials and of the associated mechanisms.