Stanford Engineers Invent High Tech Mirror
Stanford Engineers Invent High Tech Mirror
Stanford University engineers have just invented a high-tech mirror for beaming heat away from buildings into space, according to the university’s news section. This “new ultra-thin multilayered material can cool buildings without air conditioning by radiating warmth from inside the buildings into space while also reflecting sunlight to reduce incoming heat.”
Cooling the Building
Stanford University engineers have invented a material which works to cool buildings. This material works by reflecting the incoming sunlight and sending heat from within the structure directly into space in the form of infrared radiation. This material can be coated onto buildings to help cool them even on the sunny days.
How It Works?
The mirror works by radiating heat away from the building and ejecting it into space. This team which discovered this invention was led by Stanford Professor Shanghai Dan and research associate Aaswath Raman. This energy efficient and conserving invention is a major breakthrough which was covered in the journal entitled Nature.
The Miracle Material
The crux of this invention lies in its very thin, multilayered material which deals with visible as well as invisible light in fresh ways. Invisible light in the form of infrared radiation is one of the ways through which heat is released from objects as well as living things. This invisible, heat producing light is what the invention eliminates from the building and releases into space.
This new material additionally works as an efficient mirror for reflecting all of the incoming sun radiation that it receives. This is known as Photonic radiative cooling which is defined by the university news section as “a one-two punch that offloads infrared heat from within a building while also reflecting the sunlight that would otherwise warm it up. The result is cooler buildings that require less air conditioning.”
Cost Effective
Researchers have indicated that this miracle material is cost effective to be deployed on a large scale. Though it is a nascent technology, it may one day reduce the demand for electricity. Considering that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuels, clean energy as well as inventions such as these have an important role to play in the future world. This coating will be sprayed on more solid material for making it perfect for withstanding the elements. With global warming, cooling technologies such as these are needed according to Raman, lead author of the Nature paper. "Across the developing world, photonic radiative cooling makes off-grid cooling a possibility in rural regions, in addition to meeting skyrocketing demand for air conditioning in urban areas," he said "Think about it like having a window into space," Fan was quoted as saying."We've created something that's a radiator that also happens to be an excellent mirror," said Raman. "This photonic approach gives us the ability to finely tune both solar reflection and infrared thermal radiation," Linxiao Zhu, doctoral candidate in applied physics and a co-author of the paper was quoted as saying.
