Enhanced heat transfer for high-performance electrocaloric cooling

Topic description

Research topic:

Conventional refrigeration systems use refrigerant gases, whose choice results from a trade-off between efficiency, safety, availability, and environmental impacts. In particular, the third-generation refrigerants (hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs) constitute significant greenhouse gases contributors (GHG), alone responsible for approximately 3% to 6% of global GHG emissions. The 4th generation of refrigerant gas remains awaited; the current trend is to return to the 1st generation (gas called natural refrigerant gas) with their knowns drawbacks, or to use hydrofluoroolefins (HFO) whose environmental impact is already documented.

Changing completely the paradigm, solid refrigerants may offer an elegant alternative. It is based on materials called “caloric materials”, in the sense that their entropy may be driven by an external loading like an electromagnetic field or a mechanical stress or pressure.

In th...