A new material developed by engineers in Texas may soon pave the way for windows, sunroofs or even windshields that efficiently regulate heat and light from the sun while being friendly to your pockets.
Scientists from the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin invented a low-temperature and low-cost process that allows easier and cheaper ways to apply coatings compared with conventional methods.
Indeed, this new low-temperature and low-cost process sets apart the new material from current liquid crystal panels, according to Engadget.
Through this process, the material can lighten or darken with a small electric charge — something that scientists call a flexible electrochromic device. The material can thus control the transmission of near-infrared radiation, which produces heat.
Such smart and flexible windows are ideal for homes and businesses because they can save on cooling and heating bills.
The material generated from the low-temperature process possesses a unique nanostructure that doubles the efficiency of the coloration process. Because of this, it can switch from tinted to clear more quickly by using less power.
Like coatings produced by high-temperature processes, the new material is made up of an amorphous structure with atoms that lack any long-range organization. However, the low-temperature process produces a unique arrangement of the atoms in a chain-like structure.
Traditional amorphous materials have denser three-dimensionally bonded structures. The new material, on the other hand, is made up of chemically condensed niobium oxide that lets ions move in and out more freely.
As a result, the new material is twice as efficient in saving energy than conventional smart window materials.
The central part of the team's research is the rare insight into the atomic structures of amorphous materials, whose "messy" structures are difficult to characterize.
Associate Professor Delia Milliron, lead researcher of the project, says little has been known about how the properties of amorphous materials are impacted by local structure.
But Milliron and her team were able to characterize it with enough specificity — the condition of catalyzing or participating in one chemical reaction.
Meanwhile, Milliron believes that the findings of their research can inspire the development of amorphous materials as supercapacitors that release or store energy efficiently and rapidly.
Milliron and her colleagues' next challenge is to create a flexible material using their new low-temperature method that exceeds the best performance of electrochromic materials produced by conventional processes.
"We want to see if we can marry the best performance with this new low-temperature processing strategy," says Milliron.
The article about the team's new material will be published the journal Nature Materials in September.
