Enhancement of the electrocaloric cooling by electric field reversal: simulation and experiment

Abstract

An improved thermodynamic cycle is proposed, where the cooling effect of an electrocaloric refrigerant is enhanced by applying a reversed electric field. In contrast to conventional adiabatic heating or cooling by on-off cycles of the external electric field, applying a reversed field is significantly improving the cooling efficiency, since the variation in configurational entropy is increased. By comparing results from computer simulations using Monte-Carlo algorithms and experiments using direct electrocaloric measurements, we show that the electrocaloric cooling efficiency can be enhanced by more than 20\% in standard ferroelectrics and also relaxor ferroelectrics, like Pb(Mg${}_{1/3}$/Nb${}_{2/3}$)${}_{0.71}$Ti${}_{0.29}$O${}_3$.

References in corpus (1)

• Giant electrocaloric effect around T${}_c$

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Determination of optimal reversed field with maximal electrocaloric cooling by a direct entropy analysis
• Origin of negative electrocaloric effect in Pnma-type antiferroelectric perovskites
• Negative electrocaloric effect in nonpolar phases of perovskite over wide range of temperature