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I'm creating this topic for discussion of said materials.
Traditional heating and cooling methods either involve circulation of phase change fluids like Ammonia or water or engineered hydrocarbons or chlorofluorocarbons between "hot" and "cold" plates, Joule-Thomson or pulse tube cryocoolers, heat pipes, etc. In modern times, we apparently have solid state heating and cooling systems that do not strictly require thermal transfer fluids, per se, that can leak into space if a collision with a piece of space debris creates a pinhole in the tubing carrying said fluid. This is not to assert that some or all of these new materials won't use a thermal transfer fluid in some stage of their thermal power dissipation loop, merely that one is not absolutely required.
Electrocaloric materials can transfer or move thermal energy using an applied electric field.
Elastocaloric materials move thermal energy by stretching and contracting shape-memory alloys such as Nickel-Titanium alloys or certain kinds of plastics or elastomers.
Magnetocaloric materials use magnetic or electro-magnetic fields to move thermal energy.
Although relatively new, there are in fact a limited number of commercialized examples of each of these technologies, primarily for HVAC or refrigeration. They offer energy savings advantages over traditional heat pump systems, so should be of great interest to those of us interested in space applications where input power / volume / weight are strictly limited, and ruthless efficiency is king. The temperature ranges some of these technologies are able to cover are still more limited than the various kinds of heat pumps we typically use, yet that may not matter much if an ideal application is found that will play to their strengths.
Generally speaking, we would use these technologies to collect and remove waste heat from our spacecraft or bases and then radiate the heat away into space.
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