The interest in electrocaloric (EC) effect has been recently revived due to great potential for developing new cooling technologies [1]. Recently, PMN-10PT ceramics have been successfully utilized in a prototype of an electrocaloric cooling device [2]. The recent advances in development of new perovskite relaxor multiferroics with large caloric effects and their use in different solid-state cooling designs will be presented [3]. The effect of electric-energy recovery, the heat regeneration, and the polarization hysteresis losses on the energy efficiency of the system is analyzed. Testing of the cooling device demonstrates the efficient regeneration and establishment of the significant temperature span across the regenerator, exceeding several times the EC temperature change within a single electrocaloric element. The influence of the material’s fatigue will also be tested and discussed.
References
[1] A. S. Mischenko et al., Science 311, 1270 (2006).
[2] U. Plaznik et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 043903 (2015).
[3] A. Bradesko, D. Juricic, M. Santo Zarnik, B. Malic, Z. Kutnjak, T. Rojac, Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 143508 (2016).