Giant electrocaloric effect in a wide temperature range in PbTiO3 nanoparticle with double-vortex domain structure

C Ye,B Li,J B Wang,X L Zhong

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-18275-0

Abstract

Electrocaloric effect (ECE) has the potential applications in solid-state refrigeration with the features of high efficiency and environmentally friendly. Large adiabatic temperature change in a wide temperature range is needed for electrocaloric effect to meet the requirement of commercially application. In this work, giant electrocaloric effect is found in PbTiO3 nanoparticle with double-vortex domain structure in a wide temperature range by using phase field method, which the lowest and highest adiabatic temperature change (ΔT) is 7.2 K and 16.5 K, respectively. The influence of misfit strain on the ECE of PbTiO3 nanoparticle with the double-vortex domain structure is investigated, and results show that the compress misfit strain can enhance the ECE, but the tensile misfit strain reduces the ECE. This work reveals a way to obtain giant ECE of ferroelectric materials by domain engineering and strain engineering in a wide temperature range.

Highlights

Electrocaloric effect (ECE), a temperature change of a given material in response to external electric field, has attracted considerable attention because it can be used as solid-state refrigeration to replace Freon-based cooling systems with the feature of high efficiency[1,2,3,4,5]
These works indicate that the ferroelectric nanostructure with the vortex domain structure can provide an effective way to achieving a large ECE through domain engineering
In order to better satisfy the requirement of commercially application, it has necessary to further improve the ECE of ferroelectric nanostructure with vortex domain structure near the room temperature

Summary

Introduction

Electrocaloric effect (ECE), a temperature change of a given material in response to external electric field, has attracted considerable attention because it can be used as solid-state refrigeration to replace Freon-based cooling systems with the feature of high efficiency[1,2,3,4,5]. The domain engineering, which control and adjust the properties of ferroelectric materials through changing the domain structure and number, has been proved an effective way to control and adjust the ECE of ferroelectric materials[12,13,14,15]. Our previous works have found a large temperature change related to the toroidal moment change in the ferroelectric nanoparticle with vortex domain structure[16,17]. In order to better satisfy the requirement of commercially application, it has necessary to further improve the ECE of ferroelectric nanostructure with vortex domain structure near the room temperature. The influence of misfit strain on the ECE of PbTiO3 ferroelectric nanoparticle with a double-vortex domain structure is investigated by using phase field method. The mechanism of this large adiabatic temperature change is analyzed in detail

Methods

Results

Conclusion