Self-heating of relaxor and ferroelectric ceramics during electrocaloric field cycling

Electrocaloric (EC) materials are prominent candidates for new generations of scalable and green refrigeration devices. While most often the research on EC materials has been focused on achieving high magnitudes of the EC temperature change, little is known about electrical losses and self-heating effects, despite playing a critical role in the cooling performance of these materials. Here, we analyzed the behavior of a set of ceramic materials under EC-device-like electric-field-driving conditions. The EC temperature response was studied focusing on the contributions to the self-heating in three different compositions: relaxor Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 and two different (undoped and Nb-doped) rhombohedral ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 compositions. The specific relaxor and ferroelectric nature of the analyzed materials enabled us to separate the different contributions, such as domain switching and electrical conductivity, to their EC responses. We show that besides having a large EC temperature change, low electrical losses, leading to reduced self-heating effects, are another key parameter to be considered in the engineering of materials for future EC cooling devices.