Abstract
As buildings are a large energy user, it is important to not only reduce their consumption, but also have them generate their own electricity. Here, we describe a smart window that could reduce electricity consumption, normally used for air conditioning and lighting, by absorbing excess solar radiation with dichroic fluorescent dye molecules aligned in a switchable liquid crystal host and guiding the re-emitted light energy to the edges of the device, where it can be used to generate electricity via attached photovoltaic cells. The liquid crystals are responsive both to temperature changes and applied electrical fields. At higher temperatures, transmission decreases due to increased disorder in the liquid crystals, while the application of an electrical field increases transmission by effectively realigning the dyes for minimal absorption. Using alternative configurations, a window with a transparent rest state was also produced, in which transmission can be decreased by applying an electrical field; the thermal response remains identical.
Highlights
The built environment is a large consumer of electricity, with 76% being spent in residential and commercial buildings [1], around half of this on electricity for heating/cooling and lighting [2]
One way to fabricate energy-generating smart windows is by using the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) concept [16,17]
LSCs [22,23], we show a show dual electrically and thermally responsive system our previous on switchable we a dual electrically and thermally
Summary
The built environment is a large consumer of electricity, with 76% being spent in residential and commercial buildings [1], around half of this on electricity for heating/cooling and lighting [2]. One way to reduce the amount of energy spent on heating and cooling is by controlling the amount of incoming sunlight using “smart windows” [3,4] which can change their transmissivity in response to stimuli, including heat [5,6,7], electricity [4,8,9] and light [10,11,12]. By placing photovoltaic cells at these edges, the emitted light can be used to generate electricity, the light can be used for other applications, including daylighting [18], chemical production [19,20] or horticulture [21,22]
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