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Updated: Jun 18, 2025

Experimental Methods for Investigation of Shape Memory Based Elastocaloric Cooling Processes and Model Validation
Published on: May 2, 2016
Shearo-caloric effect enhances elastocaloric responses in polymer composites for solid-state cooling
Shixian Zhang1,2, Yuheng Fu1, Xinxing Nie1
1State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China.
Abstract:
Room-temperature elastocaloric cooling is considered as a zero-global-warming-potential alternative to conventional vapor-compression refrigeration technology. However, the limited entropy and large-deformation features of elastocaloric polymers hinder the creation of the breakthrough in their caloric responses and device development. Herein, we report that the addition of a small amount of inorganic nanofillers into the polymer induces the aggregate of the effective elastic chains via shearing the interlaminar molecular chains, which provides an additional contribution to the entropy in elastocaloric polymers. Consequently, the adiabatic temperature change of -18.0 K and the isothermal entropy change of 187.4 J kg-1 K-1 achieved in the polymer nanocomposites outperform those of current elastocaloric polymers. Moreover, a large-deformation cooling system with a work recovery efficiency of 56.3% is demonstrated. This work opens a new avenue for the development of high-performance elastocaloric polymers and prototypes for solid-state cooling applications.
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