A million times cooler
Elastocaloric materials can be used for solid-state cooling applications because they can pump heat out of a system using a reversible phase transformation. However, many such materials fail after a small number of cycles. Hou et al. found that laser melting of elastocaloric metals can create fatigue-resistant microstructures. A nickel-titanium–based alloy could be cycled a million times and still produce a cooling of about 4 kelvin. This processing method could improve elastocaloric performance and move us closer to using these materials more widely for solid-state cooling applications.
Science, this issue p. 1116
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