Electrocaloric cooling technologies, enabled by the discovery of the giant electrocaloric effect in dielectrics more than a decade ago, represents a zero-global-warming-potential, environment-benign cooling alternative. Benefited from its nature as an electricity-driven capacitor, the electrocaloric working body renders the great advantages in the energy efficiency and the device integration. The decade-long efforts on advancing the technology revealed many promising material candidates with matured manufacturing protocols, as well as intriguing device prototypes for applications beyond the traditional vapor compression based cooling. This article presents the recent advances in electrocaloric cooling technologies, from material improvements to device demonstrations. The environmental impact and the energy efficiency of the technology were evaluated by the total effective warming impact and the material COP, respectively. In addition to the current progresses achieved by the decade-long research effort, the existing challenges and potential opportunities brought by the electrocaloric refrigeration will be discussed.

十多年前，电热冷却技术在电介质中发现了巨大的电热效应，因此，它代表了一种零全球升温潜能值，环境友好的冷却替代品。受益于其作为电驱动电容器的性质，电热工作体在能效和设备集成方面具有巨大优势。十年来先进技术的努力揭示了许多有前途的材料候选者，它们具有成熟的制造协议，以及引人入胜的设备原型，其应用范围超出了传统的基于蒸汽压缩的冷却方式。本文介绍了电热冷却技术的最新进展，从材料改进到设备演示。通过总有效变暖影响和材料COP分别评估了该技术对环境的影响和能效。除了长达十年的研究工作取得的最新进展外，还将讨论电热制冷技术所面临的挑战和潜在机遇。