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Chill out: freezing temperatures produced by letting a stressed alloy relax

A device has been built that relies on a solid-state phenomenon called the elastocaloric effect to produce cooling to temperatures below 0 °C, lower than existing room-temperature elastocaloric cooling systems are able to achieve. The innovation demonstrates that elastocaloric technology could offer an alternative to conventional freezing systems that use volatile greenhouse gases.

This is a summary of: Zhou, G. et al. Sub-zero Celsius elastocaloric cooling via low-transition-temperature alloys. Nature 649, 879–884 (2026).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00030-z

‘Expert opinion’ is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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