raw · papers · ingested 2026-06-28
Kilowatt-scale elastocaloric cooling by a multi-cell architecture (Nature)
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08549-9
Source: Nature, Feb 2025 (HKUST). Credibility: High (peer-reviewed, Nature). Confidence: high.
Key points
- First kilowatt-scale elastocaloric system: 1,284 W cooling power (fluid side, zero temperature lift), sustained over 500,000 cycles.
- Specific cooling power 12.3 W/g via high-frequency 3.5 Hz operation — far above prior devices (which were ≤300 W).
- Compressive tubular NiTi; graphene nanofluid heat-transfer medium; multi-cell “SMAs in series, fluid in parallel” architecture scales refrigerant mass at low system pressure.
Relevance
The current performance ceiling of elastocaloric for solid-state-cooling — crossing the kW threshold (with UMD’s 260 W / 22.5 K multimode Science 2023 demonstrator as the prior US benchmark) toward commercial relevance.