Abstract
Electrocaloric materials are promising working bodies for caloric-based technologies, suggested as an efficient alternative to the vapor compression systems. However, their materials efficiency defined as the ratio of the exchangeable electrocaloric heat to the work needed to trigger this heat remains unknown. Here, we show by direct measurements of heat and electrical work that a highly ordered bulk lead scandium tantalate can exchange more than a hundred times more electrocaloric heat than the work needed to trigger it. Besides, our material exhibits a maximum adiabatic temperature change of 3.7 K at an electric field of 40 kV cm−1. These features are strong assets in favor of electrocaloric materials for future cooling devices.
Highlights
Electrocaloric materials are promising working bodies for caloric-based technologies, suggested as an efficient alternative to the vapor compression systems
X-Ray diffraction (XRD) measurements were carried out to determine the degree of B-site cation order Ω, found to be 0.98 in PST sample 1
Sharp peaks (Fig. 1b) combined with thermal hysteresis, in zero-field specific heat Cp measurements made by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) indicate the presence of a first-order phase transition in PST at the transition temperature T0 = 300 K
Summary
Electrocaloric materials are promising working bodies for caloric-based technologies, suggested as an efficient alternative to the vapor compression systems. Their materials efficiency defined as the ratio of the exchangeable electrocaloric heat to the work needed to trigger this heat remains unknown. Lead Scandium Tantalate Pb(Sc1/2Ta1/2)O3, short form PST11–16 is one of the most promising EC materials, already utilized to build EC heat pumps[4,5,17,18,19] It exhibits a first-order ferroelectric to paraelectric (PE) phase transition near room temperature which makes it attractive for air conditioning. Nair et al.[20] measured a larger ΔTadiab of 5.5 K in PST Multi-Layer Capacitors (MLCs) when driven supercritically at
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