The presentation gives an introduction to recent developments of elastocaloric cooling and thermomagnetic energy generation by using microtechnology. Shape memory alloy (SMA) films exhibit a large temperature change upon mechanical loading, which is exploited for cooling applications. Single-stage elastocaloric cooling devices reach
a device temperature span up to 14 K combined with a high specific cooling capacity of up to 19 Wg^-1 [1]. Thermo-magnetic generators (TMGs) convert waste heat at temperatures below 200 °C into electricity reaching an output power per footprint up to 50 µWcm^-2 [2].
[1] Shap. Mem. Superelasticity 10 (2024) 119–133
[2] Joule 4,12 (2020) 2718-2732

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Bio

Manfred Kohl received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He worked as an IBM postdoctoral fellow at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, USA, and subsequently joined the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Head of the Department of Smart Materials and Devices at the Institute of Microstructure Technology of KIT. He is co-organizer of the International Conference and Exhibition on New Actuator Systems and Applications and coordinator of the Priority Program KOMMMA (Cooperative Multistage Multistable Microactuator Systems) of the German Science Foundation. His current research focuses on ferroelastic and ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, multimaterial micro- and nanotechnologies as well as corresponding smart devices.