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Sustainable all-solid elastocaloric cooler enabled by non-reciprocal heat transfer

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 651–660 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Non-reciprocal heat transfer has the potential to shape the landscape of high-performance solid-state elastocaloric cooling technology as an eco-friendly alternative of traditional vapour-compression refrigeration with environmental issues. However, neither the working principle nor the technical route of combining non-reciprocal heat transfer with solid-state caloric cooling system is clear. Here we establish a framework for the development of non-reciprocal heat-transfer-enabled solid-state elastocaloric devices. We first illustrate theoretically that the thermal rectification ratio of non-reciprocal heat transfer unit is strongly correlated with the elastocaloric cooling performance. We further build an all-solid-state elastocaloric cooler prototype incorporated with a meta-material designed non-reciprocal heat transfer unit for efficient heat transfer and stable operations. With a thermal rectification ratio of 6.5, the cooler exhibits cooling power of 174.8 mW corresponding to a cooling heat flux of 242.8 mW cm−2. The cooler with non-reciprocal heat transfer units survives a long device-level operational fatigue life of over 2 million cycles without failure under the buckling-resistant compressive loading. Our work suggests new space for the design of next-generation cooling systems embracing sustainability.

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Fig. 1: Conceptualization of non-reciprocal heat transfer in a caloric cooling system.
Fig. 2: Experimental prototype of the non-reciprocal heat-transfer-enabled elastocaloric cooler system.
Fig. 3: Cooling performance of the non-reciprocal heat-transfer-enabled elastocaloric cooler.
Fig. 4: Device-level fatigue performance of the non-reciprocal heat-transfer-enabled elastocaloric cooler.

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Data availability

All data supporting this study are available in the main text or the supplementary materials. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (project numbers 52250191 to B.L. and 12205138 to X.S.), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (project numbers 2025B1515020077 to X.S., 2024A1515030139 to X.S. and 2023A1515110651 to M.C.) and Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (project number JCYJ20220530113206015 to X.S.). We thank H. Lin and X. Li from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for the assistance of elastocaloric materials preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Jiongjiong Zhang, Mengyao Chen, Xiangying Shen & Baowen Li

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Wenmei Luo, Baojie Wei, Tianlin Luo & Baowen Li

  3. School of Science, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Xiangying Shen

  4. School of Microelectronics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Baowen Li & Guimei Zhu

  5. Shenzhen International Quantum Academy, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Baowen Li

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  1. Jiongjiong Zhang
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Contributions

J.Z. and M.C. contributed equally to this work. J.Z., B.L. and G.Z. conceived the idea. J.Z., M.C. and X.S. designed the non-reciprocal heat transfer unit. J.Z. performed the numerical analysis. M.C. performed the thermal conductivity test of the non-reciprocal heat transfer unit. J.Z. developed the non-reciprocal heat transfer unit gated elastocaloric cooler system. J.Z., W.L., B.W. and T.L. characterized the elastocaloric materials property. J.Z. designed and implemented the cooling experiments. J.Z. analysed the experimental data and organized the figures. J.Z. drafted the paper and prepared the supplementary materials. All authors discussed the results and reviewed the paper. X.S., B.L. and G.Z. supervised the research project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiangying Shen, Baowen Li or Guimei Zhu.

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Competing interests

Authors J.Z., M.C., X.S., G.Z. and B.L. have filed a China provisional patent application (number 202311010324.9) based on the experimental cooler design in this work. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Suxin Qian and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–4, Figs. 1–23 and Tables 1–4.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Demonstration of the operation of the non-reciprocal heat transfer unit gated elastocaloric cooler.

Supplementary Video 2

Demonstration of the temperature variation of heat sink/source in the operation of our elastocaloric cooler captured by an infrared camera.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Original data for plot in Fig. 1.

Source Data Fig. 2

Original data for plot in Fig. 2.

Source Data Fig. 3

Original data for plot in Fig. 3.

Source Data Fig. 4

Original data for plot in Fig. 4.

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Zhang, J., Chen, M., Luo, W. et al. Sustainable all-solid elastocaloric cooler enabled by non-reciprocal heat transfer. Nat Sustain 8, 651–660 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01552-6

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