Abstract Multilayer capacitors (MLCs) represent promising electrocaloric (EC) cooling elements because they operate at low voltages, they possess large breakdown fields, they contain inner electrodes that facilitate heat transfer, and they exhibit a macroscopic volume of active EC material. However, almost ten years after they were first suggested as EC elements, the internal heat flow has not been well studied. In this paper, we use an infrared camera to investigate heat flow within representative MLCs of Pb(Mg,Nb)O3, and we achieve good agreement with the results of finite element modelling (FEM) by identifying for the inner electrodes an effective thermal conductivity that represents the limiting factor for heat flow. Increasing the inner electrode thickness by a factor of five would increase heat flow by a factor of 2.6. Our work therefore shows that FEM can play an important role in MLC design for EC applications.

中文翻译：

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电热多层电容器中的热流

摘要 多层电容器 (MLC) 是很有前景的电热 (EC) 冷却元件，因为它们在低电压下工作，它们具有大击穿场，它们包含促进热传递的内电极，并且它们具有活性 EC 材料的宏观体积。然而，在它们首次被建议作为 EC 元件近十年后，内部热流还没有得到很好的研究。在本文中，我们使用红外相机来研究 Pb(Mg,Nb)O3 的代表性 MLC 内的热流，通过确定内电极的有效热导率，我们与有限元建模 (FEM) 的结果非常吻合这代表了热流的限制因素。将内部电极厚度增加 5 倍将使热流增加 2.6 倍。