The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will be the development of an effective approach to energy reduction in residential and commercial settings using film materials on building windows. Windows coated with passive solar film created in this project will help limit the amount of infrared and ultraviolet light entering a building. This lowers the amount of heat accumulating within the building and reduces the need for air conditioning. Importantly, this approach can be used in both new buildings and old buildings. The proposed materials can yield up to 50% energy savings for air conditioning. The novel process used in this project enhances the thermal stability of cyanine dyes up to 300 degrees Celsius, allowing for incorporation of the these dyes into inks, polymer pellets and films with protection from thermal degradation. This thermal stability would allow the nanomaterial to be incorporated into high-density polymers such as polycarbonates, polyimides and Teflon, which would allow use of inexpensive dyes to take advantage of the enhanced polymer structural stability for versatile and durable applications. The dyes are significantly less expensive than the porphyrin dyes or sputter-coated Indium-Tin oxide-Silver-Gold materials, and are potentially simpler to process into functional products for passive solar applications.
The technical objectives of this Phase I research project are to develop low-cost, thermally stabilized organic dyes to absorb specific wavelengths of ultraviolet and near-infrared for passive solar application on windows in commercial and residential facilities. This will be accomplished by adding a functional group at the end of an organic dye chain of carbon groups in order to strategically bind the dyes to a metal oxide nanoparticle. The chemical functional groups reside on side chains that are easily modified by simple chemical reactions, and the change has no effect on the chromophore so the dyes? ability to filter specific wavelengths of light are not disturbed. This has been demonstrated with several model dye compounds with various binding chemical functional groups. These modifications thermally stabilize organic dyes so they can survive high polymer extrusion temperatures without the need for hazardous organic solvents. The research objectives include the incorporation of dye bound to ZnO nanoparticles into polymers through melt extrusion; development and modification of dyes to absorb in specified wavelength ranges; binding of model dye(s) to ZnO nanoparticles and determination of optical and thermal stability; and scaling up the electrochemical process.
