Energy Materials Laboratory

From early church architectures through modern housing, windows are passages of energy and matter in the forms of light, sound, and air. By letting in heat during the summer and releasing it in the winter, windows can place huge demands on air conditioning and heating systems, thereby increasing energy consumption and raising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Latest advances in materials science have enabled precise and on-demand control of electromagnetic radiation through `smart' dynamic windows with photochromic and electrochromic materials that change color and optical density in response to light radiance and electrical potential. In this course, we will spend the whole quarter on a project to make and characterize dynamic windows based on a representative electrochromic material system, the reversible electroplating of metal alloys. There will be an emphasis in this course on characterization methods such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), optical spectroscopy, four-point probe measurements of conductivity, and electrochemical measurements (cyclic voltammetry).