A solid-state refrigeration based on electrocaloric effect: Device and its analytical model

A device concept of an electrocaloric solid-state refrigeration is presented in this paper. The core component of the device is flexural mode composite actuators, each of which is comprised of an electrocaloric layer and an elastic substrate layer bonded together. The composite actuators have an electric field induced temperature change due to the electrocaloric effect and also have large electric field induced flexural deformation due to the converse piezoelectric effect, which enables the device to bend to contact with the heat source (or heat sink) for transferring heat. An analytical model is derived by considering multi-physical couplings for an edge-clamped circular composite device, which can accurately predict the temperature change of the device as compared with the indirect approach derived from the Maxwell relation. The model shows that the temperature change is a combinatorial result from the couplings of thermal, electric, and mechanical field in the device. Moreover, the model sheds light on exploring the optimization of the solid-state refrigeration device and indicates that different thickness ratios and radius ratios of the composite actuators have a large influence on the cooling performance of the refrigerator. Published by AIP Publishing.