Heat pump tech is 170 years old. Pascal thinks it’s time for an update.

When the experimental results came back, they puzzled Adam Slavney and Jinyoung Seo. They had been testing a new class of materials for more efficient refrigerators, air conditioners, and heat pumps, a mission that the cooling appliance industry has been on for eons. The measurements for the materials that the team was testing shouldn’t have been different, but they were.

“Why are these things different? What did we change?” Slavney told TechCrunch. “We had an inkling of it within three-ish…