Pascal raises $8.5M for solid-state cooling tech

The round was co-led by Sazze Partners and LB Investment, with participation from KDB Silicon Valley, Pascal told TechCrunch. CEO Adam Slavney, who co-founded the company with CTO Jinyoung Seo, said the financing came together earlier than expected because Pascal signed a customer contract ahead of schedule.

Pascal says a refrigerator or heat pump using its material would be about 20% more efficient than existing models. Heat pumps and refrigerators use the same basic technology. The startup has signed a contract with a multinational beverage company for a pilot. It plans to deliver its first prototype early next year, with the first batch of more polished refrigerators following in 2028.

Scientists have searched for better refrigerants for nearly as long as refrigerators have existed. Older gaseous refrigerants such as Freon damaged the ozone layer, while newer ones such as R-134a are still potent greenhouse gases. Slavney described the search as “whack-a-mole” and a “never-ending treadmill.”

Solid-state refrigerants have drawn research attention because, as solids, they cannot escape into the atmosphere, avoiding the climate and ozone concerns associated with conventional refrigerants. They also promise efficiency gains. Such materials release heat when squeezed and absorb heat when pressure is released.

Pascal’s approach grew out of experiments at Harvard University. Slavney and colleagues were running high-pressure measurements that required a gas, then switched to a different gas and found the measurements differed when they should not have. After further experiments, the team realized it had found another route to solid-state refrigeration, according to TechCrunch. Pascal compresses carbon dioxide into a cartridge containing a proprietary, sponge-like material. As the gas enters the pores, its molecules bounce off the pore walls, transferring energy to the material and warming it. A heat exchanger then expels some of that heat; running the process in reverse makes the material absorb energy and transfer it to the carbon dioxide molecules.

In a Pascal refrigerator, two cartridges operate at any given time. One absorbs heat from inside the refrigerator and transfers it to the carbon dioxide, while the other takes heat from the carbon dioxide and transfers it to the outside air. The cartridges eventually become too hot or too cold, and the flow is reversed.

Slavney said the material has been cycled up to 300,000 times, equivalent to about a year of operation. He said the system moves heat more effectively than other solid-state refrigerants, so Pascal does not need to operate at the high pressures those designs might require. “We’re using conventional systems to do it,” he said. “That means we believe we can make it cheap, and that means we can make it widespread.”