Towards practical elastocaloric cooling

Elastocaloric (eC) cooling is a promising environmental-friendly emerging cooling technology that has the potential for applications at different scales. Although the performance of eC cooling is already sufficient for some applications, a balance is needed for reliability, cost, and ease of maintenance to achieve commercialization in the near future. In this Perspective, we describe challenges and necessary steps towards practical eC cooling, including material properties and manufacturing techniques, actuators that drive eC materials, essentials for good heat transfer, and different work recovery schemes, before introducing our envisioned application scenarios.