Switchable Materials for Smart Windows.

By Yang Wang, Evan L. Runnerstrom, D. Milliron. Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2016

433 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article reviews the basic principles of and recent developments in electrochromic, photochromic, and thermochromic materials for applications in smart windows. Compared with current static windows, smart windows can dynamically modulate the transmittance of solar irradiation based on weather conditions and personal preferences, thus simultaneously improving building energy efficiency and indoor human comfort. Although some smart windows are commercially available, their widespread implementation has not yet been realized. Recent advances in nanostructured materials provide new opportunities for next-generation smart window technology owing to their unique structure-property relations. Nanomaterials can provide enhanced coloration efficiency, faster switching kinetics, and longer lifetime. In addition, their compatibility with solution processing enables low-cost and high-throughput fabrication. This review also discusses the importance of dual-band modulation of visible and near-infrared (NIR) light, as nearly 50% of solar energy lies in the NIR region. Some latest results show that solution-processable nanostructured systems can selectively modulate the NIR light without affecting the visible transmittance, thus reducing energy consumption by air conditioning, heating, and artificial lighting.

Subfields: Inorganic Chemistry, Polymers and Plastics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/906b7cb9250ab306e4104586477ae9619badb31e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Inorganic Chemistry

1. Alán Aspuru-Guzik
2. Muratahan Aykol
3. Kristin A. Persson

In Polymers and Plastics

1. Alán Aspuru-Guzik
2. L. Manna
3. Christoph J. Brabec
4. I. Kriegel
5. Francesco Scotognella
6. F. C. Krebs
7. Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci
8. S. Choulis

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. L. Manna
2. I. Kriegel
3. Francesco Scotognella
4. Kristin A. Persson

Citations in the corpus

• Accelerating the discovery of materials for clean energy in the era of smart automation (2018, background): “Smart windows 132–135 allow for active control of the transmittance of infrared radiation while remaining transparent.”
• Plasmonic doped semiconductor nanocrystals: Properties, fabrication, applications and perspectives (2017, background): “[313,316] Reversible LSPR tuning is also possible by manipulation with an applied potential by charging and discharging of the degenerately doped NC assemblies.[10,22,310,317] Also selective NIR and visible light switching was shown in doped anatase titania NCs.”
• Broadband Light Management with Thermochromic Hydrogel Microparticles for Smart Windows (2019, background): “Previous transmittance modulation processes mainly rely on the change of extinction in thermochromic metal oxides or electrochromic active materials.(3) However, this reliance leads to challenges for concurrently achieving a large tuning contrast of refractive index, a broadmodulation spectrum, and ”