Low-k nano-dielectrics facilitate electric-field induced phase transition in high-k ferroelectric polymers for sustainable electrocaloric refrigeration.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38267410.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-44926-8 and PMC identifier 10808131.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Ferroelectric polymer-based electrocaloric effect may lead to sustainable heat pumps and refrigeration owing to the large electrocaloric-induced entropy changes, flexible, lightweight and zero-global warming potential. Herein, low-k nanodiamonds are served as extrinsic dielectric fillers to fabricate polymeric nanocomposites for electrocaloric refrigeration. As low-k nanofillers are naturally polar-inactive, hence they have been widely applied for consolidate electrical stability in dielectrics. Interestingly, we observe that the nanodiamonds markedly enhances the electrocaloric effect in relaxor ferroelectrics. Compared with their high-k counterparts that have been extensively studied in the field of electrocaloric nanocomposites, the nanodiamonds introduces the highest volumetric electrocaloric enhancement (~23%/vol%). The resulting polymeric nanocomposite exhibits concurrently improved electrocaloric effect (160%), thermal conductivity (175%) and electrical stability (125%), which allow a fluid-solid coupling-based electrocaloric refrigerator to exhibit an improved coefficient of performance from 0.8 to 5.3 (660%) while maintaining high cooling power (over 240 W) at a temperature span of 10 K.