|
Smart Glass
Smart glass, also known as switchable glass, dynamic glass, and smart-tinting glass, is a type of glass that can change its optical properties, becoming opaque or tinted, in response to electrical or thermal signals. This can be used to prevent sunlight and heat from entering a building during hot days, improving energy efficiency. It can also be used to conveniently provide privacy or visibility to a room. There are two primary classifications of smart glass: active or passive. The most common active glass technologies used today are electrochromic, liquid crystal, and suspended particle devices (SPD). Thermochromic and photochromic are classified as passive technologies. When installed in the envelope of buildings, smart glass helps to create climate adaptive building shells, which benefits include things such as natural light adjustment, visual comfort, UV and infrared blocking, reduced energy use, thermal comfort, resistance to extreme weather conditions, and privacy. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glass
Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window panes, tableware, and optics. Some common objects made of glass are named after the material, e.g., a Tumbler (glass), "glass" for drinking, "glasses" for vision correction, and a "magnifying glass". Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of the Melting, molten form. Some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring, and obsidian has been used to make arrowheads and knives since the Stone Age. Archaeological evidence suggests glassmaking dates back to at least 3600 BC in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Egypt, or Syria. The earliest known glass objects were beads, perhaps created accidentally during metalworking or the production of faience, which is a form of pottery using lead glazes. Due to its ease of formability int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transition Metal
In chemistry, a transition metal (or transition element) is a chemical element in the d-block of the periodic table (groups 3 to 12), though the elements of group 12 (and less often group 3) are sometimes excluded. The lanthanide and actinide elements (the f-block) are called inner transition metals and are sometimes considered to be transition metals as well. They are lustrous metals with good electrical and thermal conductivity. Most (with the exception of group 11 and group 12) are hard and strong, and have high melting and boiling temperatures. They form compounds in any of two or more different oxidation states and bind to a variety of ligands to form coordination complexes that are often coloured. They form many useful alloys and are often employed as catalysts in elemental form or in compounds such as coordination complexes and oxides. Most are strongly paramagnetic because of their unpaired d electrons, as are many of their compounds. All of the elements that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phase Transition
In physics, chemistry, and other related fields like biology, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic State of matter, states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas, and in rare cases, plasma (physics), plasma. A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical property, physical properties. During a phase transition of a given medium, certain properties of the medium change as a result of the change of external conditions, such as temperature or pressure. This can be a discontinuous change; for example, a liquid may become gas upon heating to its boiling point, resulting in an abrupt change in volume. The identification of the external conditions at which a transformation occurs defines the phase transition point. Types of phase transition States of matter Phase transitions commonly refer to when a substance tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Research Council (Canada)
The National Research Council Canada (NRC; ) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research and development. It is the largest federal research and development organization in Canada. The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development is responsible for the NRC. Mandate NRC is an Government agency, agency of the Government of Canada, and its mandate is set out in the ''National Research Council Act''. Under the Act, the NRC is responsible for: * Undertaking, assisting or promoting scientific and industrial research in fields of importance to Canada; * Providing vital scientific and technological services to the research and industrial communities; * Investigating standards and methods of measurement; * Working on the standardization and certification of scientific and technical apparatus, instruments and materials used or usable by Canadian industry; * Operating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transparent Conducting Oxide
Transparent conducting films (TCFs) are thin films of optically transparent and electrically conductive material. They are an important component in a number of electronic devices including liquid-crystal displays, OLEDs, touchscreens and photovoltaics. While indium tin oxide (ITO) is the most widely used, alternatives include wider-spectrum transparent conductive oxides (TCOs), conductive polymers, metal grids and random metallic networks, carbon nanotubes (CNT), graphene, nanowire meshes and ultra thin metal films. TCFs for photovoltaic applications have been fabricated from both inorganic and organic materials. Inorganic films typically are made up of a layer of transparent conducting oxide (TCO),Conductive Oxide Thin Films Materion Technical Paper, "Transparent Conduct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nanoscopic Scale
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing properties of matter. This definition of nanotechnology includes all types of research and technologies that deal with these special properties. It is common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to research and applications whose common trait is scale. An earlier understanding of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabricating macroscale products, now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. Nanotechnology defined by scale includes fields of science such as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, energy storage, engineering, microfabrication, and molecular engineering. The associated rese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liquid Crystal
Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter whose properties are between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For example, a liquid crystal can flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a common direction as in a solid. There are many types of LC Phase (matter), phases, which can be distinguished by their Optics, optical properties (such as Texture (crystalline), textures). The contrasting textures arise due to molecules within one area of material ("domain") being oriented in the same direction but different areas having different orientations. An LC material may not always be in an LC state of matter (just as water may be ice or water vapour). Liquid crystals can be divided into three main types: thermotropic, lyotropic, and #Metallotropic liquid crystals, metallotropic. Thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystals consist mostly of organic molecules, although a few minerals are also known. Thermotropic LCs exhibit a phase transition into the L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viologen
Viologens are organic compounds with the formula (C5H4NR)2n+. In some viologens, the pyridyl groups are further modified. Viologens are called so, because these compounds produce violet color on reduction [violet + Latin ''gen'', generator of]. The viologen paraquat (R = methyl), is a widely used herbicide. As early as in the 1930s, paraquat was being used as an oxidation-reduction indicator, because it becomes violet on reduction. Other viologens have been commercialized because they can change color reversibly many times through Redox, reduction and oxidation. The name viologen alludes to violet, one color it can exhibit, and the radical ion, radical cation (C5H4NR)2+ is colored intensely blue. Types of viologens As bipyridinium derivatives, the viologens are related to 4,4'-bipyridyl. The basic nitrogen centers in these compounds are alkylated to give viologens: :(C5H4N)2 + 2 RX → [(C5H4NR)2]2+(X−)2 The alkylation is a form of quaternization. When the alkylati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electrode
An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or a gas). In electrochemical cells, electrodes are essential parts that can consist of a variety of materials (chemicals) depending on the type of cell. An electrode may be called either a cathode or anode according to the direction of the electric current, unrelated to the potential difference between electrodes. Michael Faraday coined the term "" in 1833; the word recalls the Greek ἤλεκτρον (, "amber") and ὁδός (, "path, way"). The electrophore, invented by Johan Wilcke in 1762, was an early version of an electrode used to study static electricity. Anode and cathode in electrochemical cells Electrodes are an essential part of any battery. The first electrochemical battery was devised by Alessandro Volta and was aptly named the Voltaic cell. This battery consisted of a stack of copper and zinc electrodes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Passivation (chemistry)
In physical chemistry and engineering, passivation is coating a material so that it becomes "passive", that is, less readily affected or corroded by the environment. Passivation involves creation of an outer layer of shield material that is applied as a microcoating, created by chemical reaction with the base material, or allowed to build by spontaneous oxidation in the air. As a technique, passivation is the use of a light coat of a protective material, such as metal oxide, to create a shield against corrosion. Passivation of silicon is used during fabrication of microelectronic devices. Undesired passivation of electrodes, called "fouling", increases the circuit resistance so it interferes with some electrochemical applications such as electrocoagulation for wastewater treatment, amperometric chemical sensing, and electrochemical synthesis. When exposed to air, many metals naturally form a hard, relatively inert surface layer, usually an oxide (termed the "native oxid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chromogen
In chemistry, the term chromogen refers to a colourless (or faintly coloured) chemical compound that can be converted by chemical reaction into a compound which can be described as "coloured" (a chromophore). There is no universally agreed definition of the term. Various dictionaries give the following definitions: * A substance capable of conversion into a pigment or dye. * Any substance that can become a pigment or coloring matter, a substance in organic fluids that forms colored compounds when oxidized, or a compound, not itself a dye, that can become a dye. * Any substance, itself without color, giving origin to a coloring matter. In biochemistry the term has a rather different meaning. The following are found in various dictionaries. * A precursor of a biochemical pigment * A pigment-producing microorganism * Any of certain bacteria that produce a pigment * A strongly pigmented or pigment-generating organelle, organ, or microorganism. Applications in chemistry *In chromogeni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
