Researchers have developed a heat-driven cooling system that can use waste heat or solar energy to produce cooling, potentially offering a new approach to refrigeration without relying on an electrically powered motor.
The prototype was developed by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Tsukuba in Japan. It uses two ultrathin nickel-titanium films, with one converting heat into mechanical motion and the other using that motion to generate cooling. The study was published August 28, 2026, in Nature Energy.
The technology builds on elastocaloric cooling, an emerging solid-state alternative to conventional refrigeration. Shape-memory alloys can cool when mechanical stress is released, but existing systems generally require electrically powered actuators to repeatedly apply that mechanical force.
The new design eliminates that requirement by using heat itself as the driving energy.
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