We describe our study on a new cooling device based on the electrocaloric effect (ECE). The ECE causes increases and decreases in the temperature of dielectric material by changing the electric field. We used a multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLC) to demonstrate the temperature change on the basis of the ECE. The temperature change in commercial MLCs can be controlled by applying a voltage to them, and the maximum change is 0.55 K when 300 V are used. However, these changes are sequentially caused by applying and removing the voltage. Therefore, this phenomenon to a cooling device was difficult to apply. We used a heat pipe that had an anisotropic heat conduction feature to separate the heating and cooling. We developed a cooling device consisting of MLCs and a heat pipe containing acetone as the working fluid. The MLCs were set in the bottom of the heat pipe to create the cold side and the other side of the heat pipe was attached to a heatsink for the hot side. Only the heat from the ECE in this device was transferred to the heatsink. The temperature of the cold side decreased due to voltage being periodically applied and removed. This device revealed that the temperature of an MLC dropped 0.49 K when 300 V were used at a 0.1-Hz frequency.
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