Spectrally-Selective Solar Films for Operational Energy Conservation of Urban Greenhouses

Greenhouse and high tunnel operations are a large and significant part of U.S. agriculture and also consume lots of Energy. Plastic films and various additives have been adopted in covering greenhouse and high tunnel structures for a long time. However, these technologies are mostly not able to efficiently and effectively modulate solar near-infrared Energy (utilize it for winter and block it in summer), independent of visible light for photosynthesis. In recent years, many studies on the optical and thermal properties of nanoparticles (NPs) have found a few plasmonic NPs can exhibit strong absorption and highly efficient light-to-heat conversion in the near-infrared region with no or few effects on the other spectral regions. This project is to develop, implement, and examine a new class of plastic films which are with dispersed prescribed plasmonic NPs.