Progress on electrocaloric multilayer ceramic capacitor development

A multilayer capacitor comprising 19 layers of 38 μm-thick 0.9Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–0.1PbTiO3 has elsewhere been shown to display electrocaloric temperature changes of 2.2 K due to field changes of 24 V μm−1, near ∼100 °C. Here we demonstrate temperature changes of 1.2 K in an equivalent device with 2.6 times the thermal mass, i.e., 49 layers that could tolerate 10.3 V μm−1. Breakdown was compromised by the increased number of layers, and occurred at 10.5 V μm−1 near the edge of a near-surface inner electrode. Further optimization is required to improve the breakdown strength of large electrocaloric multilayer capacitors for cooling applications.