Description of Work:

In Germany, refrigeration accounts for 14% of electricity consumption. This proportion is expected to increase steadily in the future. Innovations in cooling technology can therefore make an important contribution to climate and environmental protection.

Elastocaloric cooling is an emerging solid-state cooling technology with the potential to provide environmentally friendly cooling with high efficiency. Currently, superelastic shape memory alloys (SMA) are the most promising elastocaloric materials. They respond to the application and release of stress by self-heating and -cooling, respectively, due to a reversible solid-to-solid phase transformation. SMA films are especially promising for elastocaloric cooling, since they combine a high elastocaloric effect size with highly efficient heat transfer due to the large surface-to-volume ratio of film geometries. In previous work, first SMA film-based elastocaloric cooling demonstrators have been fabricated and tested successfully. The present work intends to extend the demonstrator concept to cascaded and parallel designs to enhance the temperature range and cooling power. The focus is on cooling in the miniature range, such as cooling electronic chips or temperature control of bioanalytical chips.

This is a comprehensive project that offers the opportunity to work with embedded systems while also allowing you to test the measurement setup. Additionally, it provides the potential for you to co-author conference and/or journal publications.

Your Tasks:

• Characterization of SMA material properties (structure, mechanical, thermal)
• Design development based on lumped element modelling (Matlab/Simulink) And/or
• Prototype development including fabrication technology, performance control and characterization

Personal Qualifications:

We are looking for ambitious, creative and self-motivated individuals, who like to work in a multidisciplinary and international team.

Contract's Duration: 6 - 8 Months    Entry Date: any time

click here for more information and online apply

Technical Contact

Dr. Jingyuan Xu
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
Institut für Mikrostrukturtechnik
Postfach 3640
76021 Karlsruhe

Telefon: +49 721 608-24781
E-Mail: jingyuan.xu∂kit.edu