Texas A&M Researchers Develop Heat-Storing Salogels for Buildings and Electronics

Researchers at Texas A&M University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering have developed a class of hybrid materials called "salogels" designed to reduce energy consumption in heating and cooling systems, as reported by TechXplore (https://techxplore.com/news/2026-10-gel-energy-consumption.html). The study was featured on the cover of the June 10 issue of the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Heating and cooling buildings accounts for a significant portion of global energy demand. Inorganic salt hydrates are capable of storing large volumes of thermal energy and offer high fire resistance, absorbing heat during warm daytime periods and releasing it at night. However, standalone salt hydrates tend to leak and degrade mechanically over repeated thermal cycles. By integrating a polymer network into the inorganic salt hydrates, the research team stabilized the material against structural breakdown without reducing heat storage capacity.

The research was led by Dr. Kartik Kumar Rajagopalan, a research scientist at Texas A&M's Soft Matter Facility (SoMF), under the leadership of Dr. Svetlana A. Sukhishvili, professor and director of SoMF. Dr. Peiran Wei, a senior research scientist and facility manager at SoMF, designed the journal's cover illustration depicting a salogel shaped like a gummy bear.

"Salogels represent a shift from simply storing heat to engineering multifunctional materials that combine thermal energy storage and conversion," Rajagopalan said. "By understanding how polymers interact with salt hydrates at the molecular level, we can begin to design materials with properties tailored for real-world energy applications."

The research team found that the polymer network alters how salt hydrates crystallize, helping to prevent supercooling. Beyond architectural heating and cooling, the authors noted potential use cases in battery thermal management, temperature-control electronics, smart windows, anti-icing coatings, supercapacitors, and energy conversion systems. The experimental observations may also serve as training inputs for machine learning tools that assist in material design.

The project built on several years of investigation by Sukhishvili's group into polymer and salt hydrate interactions, along with experimental work compiled over several months. Rajagopalan stated that subsequent research will focus on increasing the mechanical strength of the salogels, further mitigating supercooling, evaluating 3D printing techniques for processing, and testing the materials in electrochemical energy conversion platforms.