Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo: Making smart windows smarter

Heating, cooling, and lighting for buildings represent 40 percent of our nation's energy consumption. Smart windows can reduce energy needs by up to 40 percent by regulating the transmission of visible and near-infrared light.

In this plenary seesion, Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo of Princeton University highlights a self-powered smart-window technology that uses UV-harvesting organic solar cells for onboard power. Highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, implementation of such smart windows can simultaneously provide energy savings and increase occupant comfort.

Her company, Andluca Technologies, spun out of Princeton last year, and though it is still developing the technology ahead of a product launch, prototypes are working and the next stage will involve scaling up for production. Established in 2017 after more than 12 years of research on light-responsive films at the Princeton lab, Andluca is looking beyond the main target of creating self-powered smart windows for new and retrofitted buildings - it is also working on versions of the technology suitable for automobiles.

"Organic semiconductors are perfect for this kind of work," says Loo. "We like to say this makes smart windows ‘smarter.'"

Loo sees the potential for even smarter approaches. "It is the intelligent management of sunlight," she said, also pointing out that by capturing UV light, the windows generate more energy than is required to merely operate the color-shifting electrochromic element - a feature that may open up further applications in energy storage for powering WiFi communication, or to permit remote-controlled operation.

Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo is the Theodora D. '78 and William H. Walton III '74 Professor in Engineering and Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy
and the Environment at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the processing and development of materials for opto-electronics. She is a
fellow of the American Physical Society and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.

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