Large Room Temperature Negative Electrocaloric Effect in Novel Antiferroelectric PbHfO₃ Films

Extremely high temperature in a chip will severely affect the normal operation of electronic equipment; however, the traditional air conditioning cooling technology is unsuitable for integrated circuit cooling. It is necessary to develop convenient and high-efficiency cooling techniques. In this paper, PbHfO3 antiferroelectric (PHO AFE) film was fabricated by a sol–gel method and was first found to be a promising electrocaloric (EC) material with high temperature change (ΔT ∼ −7.7 K) and acceptable EC strength (|ΔT/ΔE| ∼ 0.023 K cm kV–1) at room temperature. In addition to the negative EC effect (ECE), a large positive ECE can be observed at high temperature. The outstanding ECEs and their combination will make the PHO film one of the potential candidates for next-generation solid-state refrigeration. To understand the underlying physical mechanism for positive and negative ECEs in the PHO AFE film, a modified Ginzburg–Landau–Devonshire free-energy theory is adopted.