A SOLID-STATE HEAT PUMP USING ELECTROCALORIC CERAMIC ELEMENTS
Open Access
Author:
Hilt, Matthew Gordon
Graduate Program:
Physics
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
December 17, 2009
Committee Members:
J D Maynard, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor J D Maynard, Committee Chair/Co-Chair Gerald Dennis Mahan, Committee Member Peter E Schiffer, Committee Member Victor Ward Sparrow, Committee Member
The thermoacoustic cycle is a robust thermodynamic cycle that can be generalized
to describe and develop an all-solid-state heat pump using generic caloric elements.
Ferroelectric barium strontium titanate (BST) and relaxor lead magnesium niobate - lead titanate (PMN-PT) are two candidate materials for the caloric elements using the electrocaloric effect. I developed a procedure to repeatably produce high quality BST and PMN-PT ceramics so that the electrocaloric and dielectric properties could be accurately measured. The measured electrocaloric properties serve as the baseline numbers for
calculating the performance of a proposed all-solid-state cooler based on thermoacoustic
principles.
