Currently, functional materials are attracting considerable attention in the effort to solve some tough challenges the world is faced with. Thermochromic (TC) materials have the potential to make buildings more energy efficient because of their ability to change color (i.e black to white) at specific temperatures. Using this property, TC materials can reflect solar radiation in the summer, to keep a building cool during daytime hours, and absorb solar radiation in the winter to keep the building warm when their color is dark. Very often, to increase their durability, thermochromic materials are encapsulated. In this work, a new process has been developed to encapsulate low temperature TC materials with silicon dioxide. The encapsulated TC material has been characterized by several methods to determine its performance, such as SEM and TEM to determine the SiO2 shell structural properties, TGA and DSC to test its thermal properties. The as developed SiO2 encapsulated thermochromic materials demonstrated the color transition at around 31oC.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USF/oai:scholarcommons.usf.edu:etd-9193 |
| Date | 25 June 2019 |
| Creators | Huang, Mingyang |
| Publisher | Scholar Commons |
| Source Sets | University of South Flordia |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
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