A research team led by associate Prof. YIN Lihua from Institute of Solid State physics, the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a new route based on lattice disorder effect to improve electrocaloric effect in BaTiO3-based systems.
This research was published in Applied Physics Letters.
Eelctrocaloric (EC) cooling works by using electricity to generate a cooling effect, which is more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly compared to traditional vapor-compression-based cooling methods. However, one of the main challenges has been understanding how to make this process more effective and efficient.
In their new study, the team focused on improving the EC effect in BaTiO3 (barium titanate), which is commonly used in EC cooling systems. They did this by designing materials with a special kind of disorder in their structure. This disorder helps enhance the cooling effect.
The team created a new type of ceramic, BaTi1-x-ySnxZryO3, by mixing different elements in ways that introduced both size disorder in the atoms and changes in the material's structure. Their tests showed that these changes resulted in a better EC effect, with an impressive temperature drop of about 0.80 K by using an electric field.
Additionally, they found that the material could maintain a large cooling effect over a wide range of temperatures, which is important for practical applications like cooling devices. The results suggest that by carefully controlling the lattice disorder and structure of the material, they can achieve stronger and more efficient EC effects.
The results suggest a close correlation between the lattice distortion and EC effects and an effective route to improve the EC effects, according to the team.
(a) Directly measured time-dependent ΔT for optimized sample x~0.04 at different temperatures under ΔE~60 kV/cm. (b) Directly measured tempearture-dependent ΔT at different ΔE for optimized sample x~0.04. (Image by YIN Lihua)
