Review of the VO2 smart material applications with emphasis on its use for spacecraft thermal control

Abstract

It is surprising to see the wide range and versatile potential of applications of the VO2, due to its transition from a semiconductor phase at low temperature, to a metallic state at high temperature. Although this transition’s atomic mechanism is not yet well understood, the tuneability is very reproducible experimentally and can be monitored by various triggering schemes, not only by heating/cooling but also by applying a voltage, pressure, or high power single fast photonic pulse. Many of the recent applications use not only the low-temperature phase and the high-temperature phase, but also the transition slope to monitor a specific parameter. The paper starts with a summary of the VO2 thin film deposition methods and a table presenting its recent proposed applications, some of which our team had worked on. Then the development characterization and application of the VO2 as a smart thermal radiator is provided along with the recent progress. The experimental results of the emissivity were measured at low temperature and high temperature, as well as during the transition in vacuum based on the thermal power balance. These measurements were compared with those deduced from an average of Infrared Reflectance (2–30 µm) weighed with the blackbody reflection spectrum. The roadmap is to try alternatives of the multilayers in order to increase the emissivity tuneability, increase the device dimensions, have an easier application on space surfaces, while lowering cost.

Recent Advances of VO2 in Sensors and Actuators

“…Articles describing the practical applications of VO2 fall into two categories. S the reviews try to cover as many application areas as possible [20,36,59,60,63,66 The other type of articles covers one or two application areas in more detail. Fro we learned about VO2-based electrode design, from [67,69] about coatings, from [72 applications in photonics, and from [12] about optical sensors.…”

“…Good overviews of the material structure and properties are given in [ 20 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ]. Research on the synthesis of vanadium oxides, deposition methods, fabrication methods, and thin film fabrication are described in [ 59 , 60 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 ]. The growth of vanadium dioxide nanostructures and nanoparticle synthesis are discussed in [ 12 , 22 , 69 ].…”

“…Articles describing the practical applications of VO 2 fall into two categories. Some of the reviews try to cover as many application areas as possible [ 20 , 36 , 59 , 60 , 63 , 66 , 70 , 71 ]. The other type of articles covers one or two application areas in more detail.…”

Determining Hubbard U of VO2 by the quasi-harmonic approximation

“…[15][16][17][18][19] The reversible nature of this transition, along with the relative ease of synthesis, [20][21][22][23] makes VO 2 an ideal material for various applications, including smart windows, [24,25] photoelectric switches, [26] information storage, [27] and thermal control of spacecraft. [28] Moreover, the unique MIT behavior of VO 2 has gained renewed attention with the development of new ultrafast microscopy techniques. [29,30] The MIT in VO 2 , with its drastically changed physical properties, can be triggered by different stimuli such as temperature, pressure, light, electric field, and doping.…”

Detailed pathway for a fast low-temperature synthesis of strongly thermochromic W-doped VO2films with a low transition temperature

“…monoclinic VO 2 (M1) semiconducting phase to a hightemperature tetragonal VO 2 (R) metallic phase at a transition temperature, T tr , of approximately 68 • C (bulk VO 2 [1]). This phase transformation is accompanied by a strong decrease in the infrared transmittance, and by a strong increase in electrical and thermal conductivity, which make VO 2 -based films a promising candidate for numerous applications, such as electronic and optical switches, thermal sensors, smart radiator devices, adaptive thermal camouflage and energysaving smart windows with automatically varied solar energy transmittance (see, for example [2][3][4][5][6][7][8], and the works cited therein).…”