Adapted from this Berkeley Lab Press Release
Congratulations to the Molecular Foundry’s award-winning innovators! Presented by R&D Magazine, the R&D 100 Awards recognize the year’s top 100 technology products from industry, academia, and government-sponsored research, ranging from chemistry to materials to biomedical breakthroughs. Of the record eight awards that recognized Berkeley Lab research, two came from work at the Molecular Foundry.
A team led by Delia Milliron developed the Universal Smart Window Coating that enables dynamic control over how much of the sun’s heat and light enters a building through its windows. Unlike competing technologies, the Universal Smart Window Coating can block heat-producing near-infrared solar radiation without blocking visible light. This independent control is unique in the smart-window market and means occupants can have natural lighting indoors without unwanted thermal gain, reducing the need for both air-conditioning and artificial lighting. The same window can also be switched to a dark mode, blocking both light and heat, or to a bright, fully transparent mode. The other members of the development team are Guillermo Garcia, Raffaella Buonsanti, and Anna Llordés.
R&D magazine also recognized the creation of the Campanile Probe by a team made up of Foundry scientists: Alex Weber-Bargioni, P. James Schuck, and Stefano Cabrini. A powerful new tool for exploring matter at the nanoscale, this probe delivers information about material composition and behavior with a resolution 100 times greater than what is currently possible. Named for the bell tower its shape resembles, the Campanile Probe uses an innovative design to enable optical spectroscopy with nanoscale resolution by squeezing light into a strongly enhanced field at the tip of an optical fiber. Despite the sophisticated quantum physics that underlie its design, the Campanile Probe is straightforward to use and will help scientists design the materials of tomorrow, be they faster semiconductors, cheaper solar cells, or better drugs.
