Fabrication and Optimization of Low Emissivity Polymeric films for Energy Efficiency

Abstract

Energy crisis is the major problem of the modern era. In buildings cooling requirements are due to solar heat gain through windows. To overcome this problem, there are variety of films have been made by different methods and using different polymers. In this research a solution casting method used to fabricate low-emissivity window films using flexible polymeric substrate incorporated by metal dust. These window films further characterized by using Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-rays Diffraction, UV-Vis-NIR Spectroscopy, Heat radiometer test , Contact angle and Mechanical testing to examine the morphology, phase, absorption, transmittance, reflectance, heat flow, hydrophobic/hydrophilic nature and mechanical strength . Fabricated films show emissivity values of 3.2 W/m 2 K to 3.3 W/m 2. K for Al/CA and 3.1 W/m 2 K to 3.8 W/m2 K for Sn/CA whereas solar radiations reflectance about 80% in infrared region. The characterized low emissivity films incorporated by metal dust are tinted, uniform, and flexible hydrophilic films exhibits excellent mechanical performance for window application