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This paper demonstrated the flexible control of positive and negative electrocaloric effects (ECEs) in ⟨001⟩-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.7Ti0.3O3 single crystal, and a dual cooling cycle is proposed using their combination to improve cooling capacity. The ECE exhibits a complex evolution of positive-negative-positive within 20–140 °C, where the negative ECE originates from the electric field-induced transition from rhombohedral phase to high-symmetric tetragonal phase. Since the coexistence of different ECEs at some temperatures, the positive and negative ECEs alternately appear in neighboring cycles under proper applied fields, i.e., dual cooling. A significant improvement of ∼150% in cooling capacity is directly characterized by the isothermal heat flow measurement.

This paper demonstrated the electrocaloric effect (ECE) of (Na0.52K0.48-x)(Nb0.92-xSb0.08)O3-xLiTaO3 lead-free ceramics by direct differential scanning calorimetry measurement and indirect thermodynamic method. Both results show good consistency, where the direct one more accurately depicts ECE value and its evolution according to phase diagram. Due to the diffuse orthorhombic-tetragonal phase transition, the samples show a broad ECE peak which shifts to lower temperature with increasing LiTaO3 amount. Compared to previous direct results in lead-free ceramics at corresponding temperatures, they show a competitive ECE performance with ΔTmax of 0.41 K (@80 °C), 0.30 K (@35 °C) and 0.16 K (@15 °C) under 20 kV/cm fields for x = 0.02, 0.0375 and 0.045.