Issue 3, 2015

VO2/hydrogel hybrid nanothermochromic material with ultra-high solar modulation and luminous transmission

Abstract

Although vanadium dioxide (VO2) is the most well studied thermochromic material, it is limited by its intrinsic properties of low solar modulation (ΔTsol) and low luminous transmission (Tlum) arising from the high luminous absorption of VO2 at both high and low temperature and its increased reflectivity at low temperature. A range of approaches, including nanothermochromism, nanoporosity, moth eye nanostructuring, and antireflection, have been deployed, but none of them, by experiment or by simulation, could reach even half the value of ΔTsol (∼35%) with a high average Tlum (>60%) as produced by our novel fabricated VO2/hydrogel hybrid. The hydrophilic-to-hydrophobic phase transition of PNIPAm at ∼30 °C predominantly controls the luminous modulation, while monoclinic-to-rutile phase transition of the VO2 nanoparticles at ∼68 °C mainly contributes to the infrared modulation. This is the first reported hybrid integrating inorganic with organic thermochromic materials; it offers unprecedentedly good thermochromic properties and thus opens up a new research direction.

Graphical abstract: VO2/hydrogel hybrid nanothermochromic material with ultra-high solar modulation and luminous transmission

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Sep 2014
Accepted
03 Nov 2014
First published
03 Nov 2014

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015,3, 1121-1126

Author version available

VO2/hydrogel hybrid nanothermochromic material with ultra-high solar modulation and luminous transmission

Y. Zhou, Y. Cai, X. Hu and Y. Long, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015, 3, 1121 DOI: 10.1039/C4TA05035E

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