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Created by researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, the transparent film is made by weaving carbon into the atomic lattice of boron nitride. The process “forms a thin, tough layer that reflects heat, resists scratches and shrugs off moisture, UV light and temperature swings”, the team said in an announcement.
According to a new study on the coating, its durability allows it to be placed on the exterior-facing side of glass windows. This offers a “major advantage” over conventional coatings, the announcement claimed, as they are prone to degradation from environmental factors such as humidity and temperature fluctuations, which requires them to be placed on windows’ interior side.
“Although pure boron nitride shows almost similar emissivity to glass, when you add a little amount of carbon into it, the emissivity lowers significantly ⎯ and this changes the game altogether,” said team member Professor Pulickel Ajayan.
To create the coating, the researchers 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 vapour then settle onto a substrate ⎯ in this case, glass.
The researchers simulated how the material would behave in buildings in cities with cold winters, such as New York, Beijing and Calgary. They showed it could improve energy savings by 2.9% compared to existing alternatives.
The same low-temperature boron nitride deposition technique could be adapted for other materials including polymers, textiles and possibly even biological surfaces, said Professor Ajayan.
The work was published in Advanced Materials.
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