Scalable Transparent Metal-polymer Hybrid Metamaterial for Enhanced Greenhouse Effect

Tailoring the emissivity of optically engineered materials in both the solar and the ambient blackbody radiation wavelength has led to significant day-time radiative cooling. It is conceivable that manipulating the optical spectrums in the opposite way will lead to enhanced greenhouse effect, as demonstrated in current commercial low-emissivity (low-E) window coatings. In this work, based on Mie scattering and the principle of surface plasmon polaritons for enhanced transparency, metallic nanowire/polymer hybrid structures were designed to achieve the goal of enhancing day-time heating. This metal-polymer hybrid metamaterial can enhance solar heating in enclosed environment or reject thermal radiation for energy saving in air-conditioned environment. The resulted metamaterial can reflect the mid-infrared spectrum effectively(~80%) and be transparent(transmittance of about 85%) to sunlight spectrum at the same time. Comparing our metamaterial with commercial low-E glasses, our metamaterial is more transparent in the visible and less emissive in the infrared . In addition, this type of metamaterials is flexible and can be scalable-manufactured with lower cost than that of low-E glasses.