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  • Giant Electrocaloric Respon...
    Qian, Xiao-Shi; Ye, Hui-Jian; Zhang, Ying-Tang; Gu, Haiming; Li, Xinyu; Randall, C. A.; Zhang, Q. M.

    Advanced functional materials, March 5, 2014, Volume: 24, Issue: 9
    Journal Article

    A giant electrocaloric effect (ECE) near room temperature is reported in a lead‐free bulk inorganic material. By tuning Ba(ZrxTi1–x)O3 compositions which also exhibit relaxor ferroelectric response to near the invariant critical point, the Ba(ZrxTi1–x)O3 bulk ceramics at x ∼ 0.2 exhibit a large adiabatic temperature drop of 4.5 K, a large isothermal entropy change of 8 J kg−1 K−1, and a large EC coefficient (|ΔTc/ΔE| = 0.52 × 10−6 KmV−1 and ΔS/ΔE = 0.93 × 10−6 J m kg−1 K−1 V−1) over a 30 K temperature range. These properties added together indicate a general solution of the electrocaloric materials with high performance for practical cooling applications. A giant electrocaloric effect (ECE), i.e., a large adiabatic temperature drop (ΔTc) with a high electrocaloric coefficient (ΔTc/ΔE), is demonstrated in a modified lead‐free ferroelectric ceramic, BaTiO3, over a broad temperature range near the invariant critical point (ICP). Multiphase coexistence near ICP provides a larger entropy change compared with that of a pure ferroelectric–paraelectric transition. When coupled with the relaxor behavior, this leads to the observed giant ECE in BZT (x = 0.2) over a broad temperature range