New Electrochromic Window Glass

Electric glass is actually the use of electric field generated electrochemical redox reaction, resulting in changes in the characteristics of light penetration, resulting in color change. The electrochromic glass is generally composed of five layers of films, the layers of which are, in order, a transparent conducting layer, an electrochromic layer, an ion conductor layer, a counter electrode and another transparent conducting layer, respectively.

Wherein the electrochromic layer is the core of the entire glass and the ion conductor layer provides the transport of ions between the electrochromic and the counter electrode layers and the transparent electroconductive layer provides electrons to the electrochromic and counter electrode layers and the counter electrode as a source of storage of ions.

Electrochromic layer is the core of the whole glass, electrochromic materials are divided into inorganic electrochromic materials and organic electrochromic materials. The typical representative of inorganic electrochromic materials is tungsten trioxide. At present, electrochromic devices using tungsten trioxide as functional materials have been industrialized. The novel electrochromic window glass with tungsten trioxide has the advantage of rapid color change in response to reversible color changes, highly sensitive, stable chemical properties of color changes, and high cycle life.

There are many ways to prepare tungsten oxide films, such as thermal evaporation, sputtering, sol-gel, chemical vapor deposition, and all kinds of methods have advantages and disadvantages. Chemical vapor deposition and sputtering are widely used. The researchers found that doping is an effective way to enhance the phototropic properties of tungsten trioxide, such as titanium, molybdenum, vanadium and cesium. The incorporation of these elements will change the film crystallinity, grain size and surface contact area, increase the contact area of the ion conductive layer and the tungsten oxide layer, thereby enhancing the electrochromic properties.

Electrochromic material is one of the most promising smart materials in the future. The research of electrogenerated materials is the most complete with WO₃. The developed countries are devotes themselves to the practical research of all solid state electrogenerated glass, and have made considerable achievements. With the improvement of technology, in the near future, electric induced glass is expected to reduce production costs, realize all solid state devices and achieve a large scale of popularization.

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