Phase change inks show promise for passive temperature control

They achieve this by adjusting the amount of radiation that can pass through them, based on the surrounding environment.

The research was led by Dr Mohammad Taha and has been published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

Dr Taha said the inks could be used to develop coatings to achieve passive heating and cooling, reducing the need to rely on energy creation to regulate temperatures.

“Humans use a lot of energy to create and maintain comfortable environments – heating and cooling our buildings, homes, cars and even our bodies,” Dr Taha said in a statement.

“We can no longer only focus on energy generation from renewable resources to reduce our environmental impact. We also need to consider reducing our energy consumption as part of our proposed energy solutions, as the impacts of climate change become a reality.

“By engineering our inks to respond to their surroundings, we not only reduce the energy expenditure, but we also remove the need for auxiliary control systems to control temperatures, which is an additional energy waste.”