Scientists Develop Smart Window to Trap Air Pollutants

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Scientists have developed flexible smart windows that can trap air pollutants and can also keep the indoor free from harmful matters. Tuning the light intensity and reducing the concentration of atmospheric particulate matter (PM) in commercial buildings are both crucial to keep indoor people comfortable and healthy. Smart windows fabricated on the flexible and transparent silver (Ag)-nylon electrodes can tune the light intensity entering commercial buildings to maintain thermal comfort. However, fabricating a large-scale transparent smart window for high-efficiency PM2.5 capture has been a significant challenge, until now, researchers said. Scientists led by YU Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) developed a simple solution based process to fabricate large area flexible, transparent windows for that can efficiently capture PM2.5.
Recently, a research team led by Prof. YU Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has developed a simple process to fabricate 7.5 m2 Ag-nylon flexible transparent windows for high efficiency PM2.5 capture with only about 15.03 dollars and 20 minutes.

The obtained Ag-nylon window material serves not only to turn the indoor light intensity as thermochromic smart windows after uniformly coated with thermochromic dye, but also to purify indoor air as high-efficiency PM2.5 filter.
The stablility of obtained material is also outstanding. Its performance remains stable after 10,000 bending cycles. In addition, even after 100 cycles of PM filtration and cleaning process, it still exhibits a removal efficiency of 99.65%.