Innovation Signal 53 (2026) | 31 August 2026
A different form of cooling is overcoming more practical barriers
Short note, about 5 minutes to read.
What happened
Cooling with solid materials is not new. What is changing is the ability to overcome more of the practical barriers that have limited how useful these systems can be.
Lower energy losses → more cooling power → longer operating life → sub-zero cooling → heat-driven cooling
The approach uses special materials that heat up and cool down as their shape changes (elastocaloric cooling). Researchers have been working to turn this effect into a practical alternative to conventional refrigeration.
Researchers at Xi’an Jiaotong University demonstrated a system that recovered 78% of the mechanical energy released during its cooling cycle. Recovering more of that energy means less additional energy is needed to keep the system running.
Separately, researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology developed a system delivering 1,284 watts of cooling power, taking this form of cooling beyond the few-hundred-watt range of earlier systems. Other recent research has also demonstrated longer operating life and cooling below 0°C.
Now researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Tsukuba have demonstrated another step: using heat to help drive the cooling process.
Their prototype uses special metal films that change shape when heated (shape-memory alloys), showing that heat itself can help provide the movement needed to produce cooling.
Together, these developments suggest that researchers are moving beyond proving that this form of cooling works towards overcoming more of the barriers that have limited its practical use.
Why this matters
Most cooling today relies on electricity-powered equipment and refrigerant gases.
Cooling with solid materials offers a different route. But for it to become useful, researchers need to improve how efficiently it operates, how much cooling it provides, how long it lasts and the temperatures it can reach.
Recent research suggests that several of those limitations are beginning to weaken.
The latest work adds another possibility. If heat can help drive these systems, sources such as industrial waste heat could eventually provide some of the energy needed for cooling.
Who should care
- Cooling and air-conditioning companies
- Building and industrial cooling operators
- Data-centre and electronics companies
- Manufacturers developing new cooling systems and materials
- Industries producing potentially usable waste heat
- Energy-efficiency researchers
- Investors tracking emerging cooling technologies
What could change over the next 2 to 3 years
The next important step will be showing whether advances demonstrated separately can begin working together.
Researchers could test systems that provide more cooling while lasting longer and using energy more efficiently.
More convincing evidence would come from systems that can maintain useful cooling for long periods under conditions closer to everyday use.
What might block this
The materials still need to withstand repeated use without degrading, while heat-driven systems need to provide substantially more cooling.
Cost, manufacturing and overall efficiency will also determine whether these systems can compete with established refrigeration.
Most importantly, solving individual problems separately does not yet show that all these advances can be combined reliably and economically in one practical system.
Why I am sharing this
Cooling with solid materials has been advancing for years. What is becoming more interesting is that researchers are beginning to overcome several different barriers rather than improving only the basic cooling effect.
If those advances can eventually be brought together, this form of cooling could become useful in more situations and potentially draw on energy sources that conventional cooling systems do not normally use.
That could mean more ways to produce cooling and more ways to power it.
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Archive Tags
Cooling Technology · Elastocaloric Cooling · Energy Efficiency · Shape-Memory Alloys · Waste Heat