Abstract Buildings account for ≈40% of the total energy consumption. In addition, it is challenging to control the indoor temperature in extreme weather. Therefore, energy‐saving smart windows with light regulation have gained increasing attention. However, most emerging base materials for smart windows have disadvantages, including low transparency at low temperatures, ultra‐high phase transition temperature, and scarce applications. Herein, a self‐adaptive multi‐response thermochromic hydrogel (PHC‐Gel) with dual temperature and pH response is engineered through “one‐pot” integration tactics. The PHC‐Gel exhibits excellent mechanical, adhesion, and electrical conductivity properties. Notably, the low critical solubility temperature (LCST) of PHC‐Gel can be regulated over a wide temperature range (20–35 °C). The outdoor practical testing reveals that PHC‐Gel has excellent light transmittance at low temperatures and radiation cooling performances at high temperatures, indicating that PHC‐Gel can be used for developing energy‐saving windows. Actually, PHC‐Gel‐based thermochromic windows show remarkable visible light transparency ( T lum ≈ 95.2%) and solar modulation (△ T sol ≈ 57.2%). Interestingly, PHC‐Gel has superior electrical conductivity, suggesting that PHC‐Gel can be utilized to fabricate wearable signal‐response and temperature sensors. In summary, PHC‐Gel has broad application prospects in energy‐saving smart windows, smart wearable sensors, temperature monitors, infant temperature detection, and thermal management. 

Engineering Self‐Adaptive Multi‐Response Thermochromic Hydrogel for Energy‐Saving Smart Windows and Wearable Temperature‐Sensing

Adaptive regulation of solar and thermal radiation by windows in diverse (hot and cold) climates is essential to reduce building energy consumption. However, conventional hydrogel-based thermochromic smart windows lack thermal radiation regulation, and have difficulty to combine high solar regulation with excellent freezing resistance. It is challenging to integrate the above performance into one hydrogel-based thermochromic window. Here, we firstly prepared poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-N, N-dimethylacrylamide)/ethylene glycol (PNDE) hydrogels with tunable and excellent freezing resistance (below -100 °C) by adding the anti-freezing agent ethylene glycol, and assembled PNDE hydrogels, polyvinylidene fluoride and polymethyl methacrylate-silver nanowires panels into a freezing-resistant smart window with solar and thermal radiation regulation (STR). PNDE hydrogels had an excellent thermochromic performance with luminous transmittance (Tlum) of 89.3 %, solar regulation performance (ΔTsol) of 80.7 % and tunable phase change temperature (τc, 22-44 °C). The assembled STR window showed high Tlum of 68.2 %, high ΔTsol of 62.6 %, suitable τc of ∼30 °C and freezing resistance to low temperature of -27 °C. Moreover, the different thermal emissivity (0.94 and 0.68) of the two sides of the STR window gave it the ability of radiative cooling in hot climates and warm-keeping in cold climates. Compared to the conventional thermochromic windows, the STR window promotes heat dissipation in hot conditions while reduces heat loss in cold conditions and is applicable to diverse climates, which is a promising energy-saving device for reducing building energy consumption.

Freezing-resistant poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-based hydrogel for thermochromic smart window with solar and thermal radiation regulation

Passive solar heating and radiative cooling have attracted great interest in global energy consumption reduction due to their unique electricity-free advantage. However, static single radiation cooling or solar heating would lead to overcooling or overheating in cold and hot weather, respectively. To achieve a facile, effective approach for dynamic thermal management, a novel structured polyethylene (PE) film was engineered with a switchable cooling and heating mode obtained through a moisture transfer technique. The 100 μm PE film showed excellent solar modulation from 0.92 (dried state) to 0.32 (wetted state) and thermal modulation from 0.86 (dried state) to 0.05 (wetted state). Outdoor experiments demonstrated effective thermal regulation during both daytime and nighttime. Furthermore, our designed PE film can save 1.3-41.0% of annual energy consumption across the whole country of China. This dual solar and thermal regulation mechanism is very promising for guiding scalable approaches to energy-saving temperature regulation.

A Facile and Effective Design for Dynamic Thermal Management Based on Synchronous Solar and Thermal Radiation Regulation.

With the improvement of living standards, energy consumption for heating and cooling is increasing. Traditional heaters or coolers (air conditioners etc.) consume lots of energy and only transfer heat to different places on Earth, which increases the ambient temperature and cooling load power. Solar heating and sky radiative cooling by the sun (∼ 5800 K) and outer space (∼ 3 K) have attracted lots of attention recently due to their energy saving and sustainability, which have also shown great potential in thermal management applications for heating and cooling. While the static solar heating or radiative cooling mode would lead to overheating or overcooling in some situations, which may consume more total energy. Therefore, it's of significance to dynamically regulate thermal radiation by switching heating and cooling modes based on different situations. In this review, the fundamental principles of solar heating and radiative cooling were first introduced to understand the heating and cooling processes in thermal management. Subsequently, the dynamic regulation of thermal radiation was discussed based on active and passive actuation from the solar to mid-infrared spectra. Finally, the potential applications of thermal radiation regulation in building energy savings, smart windows, personal thermal management, and all-day energy harvesting were concluded. Further improvements are still needed to meet the practical applications in terms of the scope and cost of regulation. 

Dynamic thermal radiation regulation for thermal management

Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) and selective solar absorption (SSA) represent sustainable alternatives to conventional air conditioning, offering energy-efficient thermal management. PDRC promotes sub-ambient cooling, whereas SSA supports heating, both...

A mechanical-optical coupling design on solar and thermal radiation modulation for thermoregulation

Smart windows with tunable optical properties for energy-saving and privacy protection applications are receiving increasing attention. However, current studies of smart windows either involve the use of complex material preparation processes and complex device systems for window switching or continue to face several challenges, including low luminous transmittance, low luminous and solar modulation, and narrow wavelength range management problems. Here, we report a dual-responsive smart window that achieves solar light management in the range of 200-2500 nm. This smart window is fabricated by combining a reversible thermoresponsive hydrogel that acts as a thermochromic material with a ZnO/Ag/ZnO multilayer film that acts as a transparent heater. The as-prepared smart window can modulate solar light over a range from ultraviolet to infrared and achieves active responses to high-temperature weather, with passive responses being produced through electrical heating. The smart window shows high luminous transmittance (81.7%) and high luminous modulation (81.6%), together with an outstanding solar modulation performance (62.9%). In outdoor demonstrations, the as-prepared smart window exhibited a promising temperature regulation ability under strong solar irradiation. Therefore, the proposed smart window promises to provide a simple and effective energy management technology for buildings.

Solar Light Management Enabled by Dual-Responsive Smart Window.

Reducing the silver film to 10 nm theoretically allows higher transparency but in practice leads to degraded transparency and electrical conductivity because the ultrathin film tends to be discontinuous. Herein, we developed a thinning-back process to address this dilemma, in which silver film is first deposited to a larger thickness with high continuity and then thinned back to a reduced thickness with an ultrasmooth surface, both implemented by a flood ion beam. Contributed by the shallow implantation of silver atoms into the substrate during deposition, the thinness of silver films down to 4.5 nm can be obtained, thinner than ever before. The atomic-level surface smooth permits excellent visible transparency, electrical conductivity, and the lowest haze among all existing transparent conductors. Moreover, the ultrathin silver film exhibits the unique robustness of mechanical flexibility. Therefore, the ion-beam thinning-back process presents a promising solution towards the excellent transparent conductor for flexible optoelectronic devices. 

Pushing the thinness limit of silver films for flexible optoelectronic devices via ion-beam thinning-back process

Evaluation of the surface topography quality of large-area diamonds by image processing and mathematical modeling


 The widespread adoption of automation to work alongside humans has opened opportunities to integrate soft robotic grippers with a sense of touch for executing a wide variety of tasks. In this work, we demonstrate a visuo‐tactile sensor for soft grippers, which is based on cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCE) that uses an embedded camera‐vision system to convert the force distribution on the contact surface into an RGB map, to detect and distinguish the applied force without complex transmission and processing of electrical signals. A new method was developed for rapid and cost‐effective fabrication of wafer‐scale CLCE sensing layers with high sensitivity and excellent mechanochromic performance. By integrating the CLCE sensing layer with a 3D‐printed array of microtips, mili‐Newton forces can be detected by color changes with a resolution of ∼2 mN. Through an optimization algorithm, the computational load of color image processing is minimized, and real‐time fast processing of color signals and high‐precision tactile force prediction are performed using a low‐cost Raspberry Pi 4 camera. The processed signal guides a soft robotic gripper to complete grasping actions through a closed‐loop force control. The integration of such mechanochromic films with suitable mechanical actuators could lead to miniaturized and untethered tactile sensors.

Visuo‐Tactile Sensor Enabled by Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Elastomer for Soft Robotics

Asymmetric fractures enabled fracture diodes via dry patterning.

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