High Performance of Carbon Nanotube Refrigerators. Issue 4 (25th January 2019) - Cantuario, Tiago E.
Abstract: Vapor‐compression dominates the market for refrigeration devices due to low cost and relatively high efficiency. However, the most efficient vapor refrigerants are either ozone depleting or global warming substances. Solid‐state cooling is a young field of research with promising results toward the development of new, efficient, and environment friendly technology for a new generation of refrigeration devices. One of these methods is based on the so‐called elastocaloric effect (ECE), which consists of a temperature variation of a system in response to the application of adiabatic stresses. Although most of the literature describes the study of ECE solid‐state cooling based on materials undergoing phase‐transitions, a study recently predicted that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) present ECE as large as 30 K for 3% of strain. This motivates research toward the development of nanorefrigerators. As nobody knows the efficiency of such an ECE‐based CNT nanorefrigerator, here, significantly high coefficient of performance values of 4.1 and 6.5, and extracted heat per weight as large as 40 J g −1 are reported for a zigzag CNT nanorefrigerator operating in an Otto‐like thermodynamic cycle. This efficiency is shown to overcome that of some other ECE materials. Abstract : High coefficient of performance and heat per weight extracted from the cold reservoir are predicted for elastocaloric‐based carbon nanotube (ECE‐CNT) nanorefrigerators . Resilience and absence of phase‐transition during the application of stress are important advantages of an ECE‐CNT cooling device. ECE‐CNT nanorefrigerators are completely global‐warming‐free with the advantage of possibly being integrated into nanoelectronic devices.