Armourcoat window film is just one of the many ways in which you can save energy in your home, when you upgrade your windows.
We provide, and have reported on a various ways in which windows can be used to save energy, particularly how they can work in smart homes.
A recent breakthrough has seen scientists develop a window that can go from clear to dark in one minute, and back again.
Stanford University applied for a patent in August for this new invention, which, while offering similar benefits to their similar windows which reflect light and heat to help regulate the temperature inside a building, this window doesn’t degrade over time.
“We did not tweak what was out there, we came up with a completely different solution,” says senior author of the study Michael McGehee, a Stanford University professor of materials science and engineering.
The team surprised themselves with the success of their product, he says, and reveales they had thought to themselves: ‘how is it even possible that we’ve made something that works so well, so quickly’? while working on the project.
It is hoped that optimising windows in this way could lead to 20 per cent reductions in energy usage in homes that use the invention, however there is a catch. So far the researchers have only created windows that are 25cm squared which means they need to be scaled up to working in normal homes.
You can read more about the findings at Eurekalert.
