Large multicaloric response with rapid thermal conduction near room temperature in SEBS/Gd/SEBS composite structure under mechanical–magnetic simultaneous excitation

The mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect offers an effective strategy to enhance the solid-state refrigeration performance of materials. However, most materials exhibiting this effect are alloy-based, requiring strong external fields, exhibiting limited deformation tolerance, and being prone to fatigue, which restricts the application of mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect. In this work, the styrene–ethylene–butylene–styrene (SEBS)/Gd/SEBS structure has been proposed and confirmed that the composites exhibit not only elastocaloric and magnetocaloric effects, but also a mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect, as demonstrated by a home-made measurement device. The experimental results are consistent with the finite element simulation results. It is found that SEBS/Gd/SEBS exhibits a large multicaloric response with rapid thermal conduction near room temperature, the temperature change of the mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect is 48% greater than that of the pure elastocaloric response and 173% higher than that of the pure magnetocaloric response, while the thermal conduction time is reduced to 22% of that in the elastocaloric effect of SEBS, suggesting that the mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect under mechanical–magnetic simultaneous excitation can effectively enhance the caloric response of materials. Additionally, we propose a refrigeration cycle model based on the mechanical-magneto multicaloric effect, providing guidance for the application of multicaloric effect refrigeration.