Simulation of chip-size electrocaloric refrigerator with high cooling-power density

The large electrocaloric effect that found in ferroelectric polymers creates unique opportunity for developing high performance chip scale solid state refrigerator. This letter presents a finite volume simulation study and shows that by employing solid state regenerators and the micro-heat pumping mechanism used in the thermoacoustic cooling, a compact Electrocaloric Oscillatory Refrigeration (ECOR) device can be realized. The simulation results demonstrate that a 1 cm-long ECOR device can provide 9 W/cm³ volumetric cooling power density at 20 K temperature span. By tuning the device parameters in the model, the ECOR can reach more than 50% of the Carnot efficiency.