Electrocaloric refrigeration represents an alternative solid-state cooling technology that has the potential to reach the ultimate goal of achieving zero-global-warming potential, highly efficient refrigeration, and heat pumps. To date, both polymeric and inorganic oxides have demonstrated giant electrocaloric effect as well as respective cooling devices. Although both polymeric and inorganic oxides have been identified as promising cooling methods that are distinguishable from the traditional ones, they still pose many challenges to more practical applications. From an electrocaloric material point of view, electrocaloric nanocomposites may provide a solution to combine the beneficial effects of both organic and inorganic electrocaloric materials. This article reviews the recent advancements in polymer-based electrocaloric composites and the state-of-the-art cooling devices operating these nanocomposites. From a device point of view, it discusses the existing challenges and potential opportunities of electrocaloric nanocomposites.

Solid state refrigeration based on caloric effect is regarded as a potential candidate for replacing vapor-compression refrigeration. Numerous methods have been proposed to optimize the refrigeration properties of caloric materials, of which single field tuning as a relatively simple way has been systemically studied. However, single field tuning with few tunable parameters usually obtains an excellent performance in one specific aspect at the cost of worsening the performance in other aspects, like attaining a large caloric effect with narrowing the transition temperature range and introducing hysteresis. Because of the shortcomings of the caloric effect driven by a single field, multifield tuning on multicaloric materials that have a coupling between different ferro-orders came into view. This review mainly focuses on recent studies that apply this method to improve the cooling performance of materials, consisting of enlarging caloric effects, reducing hysteresis losses, adjusting transition temperatures, and widening transition temperature spans, which indicate that further progress can be made in the application of this method. Furthermore, research on the sign of lattice and spin contributions to the magnetocaloric effect found new phonon evolution mechanisms, calling for more attention on multicaloric effects. Other progress including improving cyclability of FeRh alloys by introducing second phases and realizing a large reversible barocaloric effect by hybridizing carbon chains and inorganic groups is described in brief.

The performance parameters for characterizing the electrocaloric effect are isothermal entropy change and the adiabatic temperature change, respectively. This paper reviews the electrocaloric effect of ferroelectric materials based on different theoretical models. First, it provides four different calculation scales (the first-principle-based effective Hamiltonian, the Landau-Devonshire thermodynamic theory, phase-field simulation, and finite element analysis) to explain the basic theory of calculating the electrocaloric effect. Then, it comprehensively reviews the recent progress of these methods in regulating the electrocaloric effect and the generation mechanism of the electrocaloric effect. Finally, it summarizes and anticipates the exploration of more novel electrocaloric materials based on the framework constructed by the different computational methods.

The widespread need to pump heat necessitates improvements that will increase energy efficiency and, more generally, reduce environmental impact. As discussed at the recent Calorics 2022 Conference, heat-pump devices based on caloric materials offer an intriguing alternative to gas combustion and vapor compression.

Thermal energy storage has been a pivotal technology to fill the gap between energy demands and energy supplies. As a solid-solid phase change material, shape-memory alloys (SMAs) have the inherent advantages of leakage free, no encapsulation, negligible volume variation, as well as superior energy storage properties such as high thermal conductivity (compared with ice and paraffin) and volumetric energy density, making them excellent thermal energy storage materials. Considering these characteristics, the design of the shape-memory alloy based the cold thermal energy storage system for precooling car seat application is introduced in this paper based on the proposed shape-memory alloy-based cold thermal energy storage cycle. The simulation results show that the minimum temperature of the metal boss under the seat reaches 26.2 °C at 9.85 s, which is reduced by 9.8 °C, and the energy storage efficiency of the device is 66%. The influence of initial temperature, elastocaloric materials, and the shape-memory alloy geometry scheme on the performance of car seat cold thermal energy storage devices is also discussed. Since SMAs are both solid-state refrigerants and thermal energy storage materials, hopefully the proposed concept can promote the development of more promising shape-memory alloy-based cold and hot thermal energy storage devices.