A new material that is as thin as aluminum foil can be used to cool houses or power plants
without using any electricity or water. The material manipulates the properties of light to reflect the sun's rays while allowing objects beneath it to passively radiate heat to cool off.
Credit: Glenn Asakawa
A heat-reflecting, futuristic supermaterial that looks like a roll of plastic wrap could one day cool both houses and power plants without using any energy, according to a new study.
Unlike solar panels, the material keeps working even when the sun sets, with no additional electricity. And the plastic wrap is made up of cheap, simple-to-produce materials that could be easily mass-produced on rolls.
"We feel that this low-cost manufacturing process will be transformative for real-world applications," Xiaobo Yin, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement. https://www.livescience.com/57902-magic-foil-cools-buildings.html
