Giant electrocaloric response in smectic liquid crystals with direct smectic-isotropic transition

Electrocaloric materials have become a viable technology for solid state heat management applications. We demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that liquid crystals (LCs) can be exploited as efficient electrocaloric materials. Numerical and experimental investigations determine the conditions under which the strongest electrocaloric effect (ECE) responses are expected in LCs. Specifically, we show that a large ECE can be expected at the isotropic-nematic and in particular at the isotropic-smectic A phase transition. In our theoretical study, LC ordering is modelled using a Landau - de Gennes - Ginzburg mesoscopic approach. The simulation results are in qualitative agreement with our high precision electrocaloric measurements conducted on 8CB and 12CB liquid crystals. In the latter, we obtained ΔT_EC ~ 6.5 K, corresponding to the largest response measured so far in LCs. The fluid property of LC electrocaloric heat cooling elements could lead to the development of devices with a higher coefficient of performance and thus better cooling power yield per mass of the ECE-based device.