Design and Synthesis of
Nano Energy Materials

Nano materials with controlled shape, size, structure, and morphology can be categorized into materials with 0D, 1D, 2D, 3D structures. To apply specific functionality, the material needs to be designed. For example, new nano material design is needed in order to control electrons, holes, photon, and phonons to make the best property possible in photoelectric devices and display devices. Electron and hole interact at sub nm and phonon interacts with each other at sub 100 nm. Also, photon, especially visible light and near-infrared light, interacts at hundred nm ~ μm. Therefore, in order to control individual property, material needs to be designed in size of interaction. In addition, to control multiple properties, materials with multi-dimensional structure with multi-scale needs to be designed.

  Also, material’s physical, chemical, and optical properties are different according to its dimension. Therefore to make material’s property more useful, technology to build up materials to make higher dimension material from lower dimension is needed. For example, confinement happens the most in 0D materials causing dramatic changes in DOS. These property makes material’s physical and optical performance to rise, but the ability to transport these special property to other messenger material is decreased. Therefore, these materials needs to be either transformed or fused together with higher dimension material. In conclusion, through dimension fused high-dimensional structure, material can get all the benefits from each dimensions.

Smart Window of
Energy Zero House 

The dependency on electricity for day-to-day needs and functioning of electrical and electronic gadgets is increasing alarmingly worldwide. In South Korea, until 2011, the electrical energy consumption at peak time in summer or winter season has been gradually reaching to the limit of maximum power generation by the power plants. The excess electrical power consumption leads to power crisis and might cause ‘blackout’ and have an impact on many economic and social problems including industry, food processing, medicine and traffic.

‘Energy Zero House’ which can be a solution for power crisis has attracted many research efforts recently and the main focus of these research is ‘Smart window’. Sun light is composed of 4 % ultra violet (UV), 47 % visible, and 49 % NIR and the smart window can control the transmission of NIR light to control the inner temperature of the building by radiative heat conduction while keeping the transmission of visible light. The transmission of thermochromic material changes with the temperature and hence these are attractive to design new generation ‘Smart window’. Therefore we research about thermochromic material for smart window.