This new material can emit up to 360 hours of near infrared light by just one minute of sunlight exposure. According to it’s inventors at University of Georgia this material could revolutionise diagnostic medicine, military and law enforcement applications & next-generation solar energy cells, due to it’s unique efficiency at collecting and storing sunlight & it’s all weather properties.
It’s a combined material out of “trivalent chromium ion” and “zinc gallogermanates” (complex oxide compound). Unlike chromium ions which release all of it’s near infrared light within few milliseconds after expose to sunlight, this new material with zinc and gallogermanates produce a “labyrinth of traps” for releasing energy over a extended duration.
According to associate professor of physics and engineering, Zhengwei Pan the research lead of Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Engineering, “When you bring the material anywhere outside of a building, one minute of exposure to light can create a 360-hour release of near-infrared light,” & he continues “It can be activated by indoor fluorescent lighting as well, and it has many possible applications.” For the last three years, Zhengwei Pan and postdoctoral researcher Feng Liu & doctoral student Yi-Ying Lu, were busy with developing this material. Earlier version were just emitted light for few minutes, however by fine tuning material composition and sintering temperature & time they manged to increase emission duration up to two weeks.
This project was funded & supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund and the UGA Research Foundation.
Information Source:Â University of Georgia