A 3D-printed full-soft regenerative elastocaloric cooler

Elastocaloric cooling employing soft elastomers represents a path to reduce the climate impacts associated with conventional vapor compression refrigeration. The use of soft elastomers enhances efficiency, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of elastocaloric systems, while significantly reducing the driving force for promising low-stress elastocaloric cooling. This study presents fully 3D-printed soft elastomeric regenerators featuring parallel plate and square channel designs, operating under 5.5–7.7 MPa. The 3D-printed elastomer exhibits an adiabatic temperature change of 2.3 K upon unloading at 600% strain. The 3D-printed elastomers were used to build a regenerative elastocaloric cooler featuring automatic fluid compensation to address large strain-induced volume changes in fluid channels, which resulted in enhanced cooling performance. The cooler achieves a 4.7 K temperature span (regeneration ratio: 2.04) in a square-microchannel regenerator and delivers a maximum specific cooling power of 1850 W/kg. Utilizing additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping of microchannel regenerators, this work demonstrates a scalable and commercially viable approach to low-force elastocaloric cooling.