Thermotropic glazings for overheating protection

In this paper, the effect of material composition on the overheating protection performance of thermotropic systems with fixed domains (TSFD) is studied. Several thermotropic layers were formulated by variation of both, matrix material and thermotropic additive. Refractometry was applied in order to obtain refractive index data as a function of temperature of all material constituents and to screen wether material combinations are promising to formulate or not. Investigations concerning optical properties, switching temperature and switching process were carried out applying UV/Vis/NIR spectrometry. Morphological analysis was conducted with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Several TSFD showed reasonable light-shielding efficiency. Nevertheless further optimization of scattering domain size and shape is necessary to improve the light shielding performance.