Two-Dimensional SiO₂/VO₂ Photonic Crystals with Statically Visible and Dynamically Infrared Modulated for Smart Window Deployment

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) photonic structures, widely used for generating photonic band gaps (PBG) in a variety of materials, are for the first time integrated with the temperature-dependent phase change of vanadium dioxide (VO). VO possesses thermochromic properties, whose potential remains unrealized due to an undesirable yellow-brown color. Here, a SiO/VO core/shell 2D photonic crystal is demonstrated to exhibit static visible light tunability and dynamic near-infrared (NIR) modulation. Three-dimensional (3D) finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations predict that the transmittance can be tuned across the visible spectrum, while maintaining good solar regulation efficiency (ΔT = 11.0%) and high solar transmittance (T = 49.6%). Experiments show that the color changes of VO films are accompanied by NIR modulation. This work presents a novel way to manipulate VO photonic structures to modulate light transmission as a function of wavelength at different temperatures.

Synthesis and Thermochromic Properties of Cr-Doped Al2O3 for a Reversible Thermochromic Sensor

“…Simultaneously, these photonic crystals maintained IR transmission at low temperature, but strongly attenuated IR transmission at high temperature, which is necessary for thermochromic smart glasses. However, similar to the VO 2 system, this SiO 2 /VO 2 2D photonic crystal system can be used only at low temperatures (≤100 °C) [9]. Željka Rašković-Lovre et al have studied the thermochromic and photochromic color change in Mg-Ni-H thin films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering [10].…”

A skin-like stretchable colorimetric temperature sensor

“…PDA film became increasingly transparent with rising temperature (Fig. S7b) and the integral luminous transmittance T lum (400-800 nm) [37,38] was plotted in Fig. 3c and Fig.…”

Vanadium Dioxide: The Multistimuli Responsive Material and Its Applications

“…Because the majority of dopants can only improve individual thermochromic property, recent trend tends to codope multiple dopants to achieve overall performance improvement . On the other hand, structure engineering on nano‐ or microscale tends to ameliorate the unsatisfied properties as summarized in Figure c namely multilayered VO 2 , biomimetic structure, nanothermochromism and porous, and gridded structure, respectively. For example, multilayered structure can not only introduce antireflection to enhance T lum , but also grant multifunctionality (antioxidation ability and self‐cleaning) to the devices and solve the mild toxicity issue in VO 2 .…”