Rice University researchers and collaborators have developed a new coating for glass could help reduce energy bills, especially during the cold season, by preventing heat-loss from leaky windows. Credit: Jorge Vidal/Rice University
A new coating for glass developed by Rice University researchers could help reduce energy bills, especially during the cold season, by preventing heat loss from leaky windows.
The material—a transparent film made by weaving carbon into the atomic lattice of boron nitride—forms a thin, tough layer that reflects heat and resists scratches and moisture, UV light and temperature swings.
To create the coating, the team used pulsed laser deposition, a technique in which short, high-energy laser bursts strike a solid boron nitride target, sparking plasma plumes that disperse into vapor then settle onto a substrate—in this case, glass. Because the process takes place at room temperature, it avoids the high heat typically required for making adhesive coatings.
According to the study published in Advanced Materials, researchers simulated how the material would behave in an actual-sized building in cities with cold winters like New York, Beijing and Calgary, showing it improved energy savings by 2.9% compared with existing alternatives. With over 4 billion square feet of new windows installed annually in the U.S. alone, the savings can add up.
The new coating has multiple advantages over conventional low-emissivity (low-E) coatings. Traditional low-E coatings are prone to degradation from environmental factors like humidity and temperature fluctuations, which requires them to be placed on windows’ interior-facing side. The new coating’s durability, however, allows it to be placed on the exterior-facing side of the glass. Additionally, from a raw materials standpoint, boron nitride is less expensive than the silver or indium tin oxide used in most commercial low-E glass.
The researchers noted that the same low-temperature boron nitride deposition technique could be adapted for other materials beside glass—including polymers, textiles and possibly even biological surfaces.
Information courtesy of Rice University