The Stirling refrigeration cycle compresses and expands an inert gas in a single cylinder. Heat is rejected at one end of the cylinder and absorbed at the opposite end. In principle the COP should be higher than for vapour compressions systems but there are various technical difficulties that have so far limited the use of Stirling cycle cooling to small prototype domestic refrigerators. There is no circulating refrigerant fluid and the hot and cold heat areas are very small which creates heat exchange difficulties. Heat pipes may be required to transfer heat to and from the system.

Malone refrigeration is a variant of the sterling cycle technology. 

The Malone refrigeration system utilises the sterling cycle principle with the use of a liquid instead of an inert gas as the refrigeration medium. 

Current research is being carried out on innovative cooling technologies by a team of experts in America at the Los Alomos Laboratories. Their research has led them to go down one of two roads to either the use of the Brayton cycle or the sterling cycle. The team had not yet decided which of these two processes to use the prototype though was based on the sterling cycle principal.