Electroactive Coatings: For Electrically Controlled on Demand Power Windows

摘要

Electrochromic devices (ECDs) are in the public domain for more than four decades, and they have evolved from inorganic to organic to polymer and now to hybrid (organic/inorganic) materials based devices. With the use of polymer in ECDs all hues of color are now possible by the proper choice of backbone from conjugated polymer family and with fast switching speed. This has also opened a new avenue in plethora of other application as optical shutters and displays. The cost can be drastically reduced but at the expense of device durability and life time. In this perspective article we will summarize the use of conducting polymers as electrochromes with selected research findings. The major obstacles in wide implementation of this technology arise from the uneconomical use of transparent conducting glasses (TCO) both as an anode and cathode and the high energy treatment during materials coating method. It is paramount research to quest for at least one TCO replacement materials as well as batch to batch reproducibility protocol development, by using less energy demanding methods i.e., wet chemistry routes.