Source : THE AGE NEWS
ClearVue Technologies says it has punched through a key global barrier for its building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) energy generating glass units after proving its Gen 3 Vision Glass can accept a high-performance low-emissivity (Low-E) metallic coating in the optimal inner-pane location for commercial building façades, helping reduce heat transmission.
The Perth-based smart building materials company says its glass panels can now be coated via a “magnetron sputter-coating process” after the photovoltaic units have already been laminated.
Sputter coating is a physical vapour deposition (PVD) process used to apply ultra-thin, uniform films onto solid objects. Magnetron sputtering is a deposition technology involving a gaseous plasma generated and confined around the material to be deposited, known as the ‘target’.
The surface of the target is eroded by high-energy ions within the plasma and the liberated atoms travel through the vacuum environment and are deposited as a thin film onto the substrate to be coated, proving a barrier against heat transmission.
‘It means our customers get the thermal performance a commercial building is designed around and clean energy from the same glass.’
ClearVue Technologies chief executive officer and managing director Doug Hunt
ClearVue’s solar glazing units typically consist of two panes of glass with a thin air-filled or sealed vacuum space between them. The company says its newly discovered capability to pass a fully-built glazing unit through a magnetron coating machine means its Gen 3 Vision Glass can now have the coating applied on surface 4 in double-glazed units.
Management says its unique surface 4 coating location, in addition to the glass’ ability to actually generate energy, delivers the higher thermal performance goals architects and façade specialists design for.
ClearVue says this contrasts with most competing BIPV products which are typically coated on surface 5, in more complex triple-glazed applications.
Soft Low-E coatings are widely specified across commercial façades because they help control solar heat and cooling loads in large buildings and ClearVue says it is the only BIPV supplier in the world currently able to pass an already-constructed energy-generating solar panel through a magnetron coating line.
ClearVue Technologies chief executive officer and managing director Doug Hunt said: “This is one of the most significant milestones in ClearVue’s history. It puts us in a class of our own. We can place a high-performance soft Low-E coating on surface 4, the room-side face of an energy-generating glazing pane, which is exactly where it delivers the greatest solar heat control. We believe no other BIPV supplier in the world can currently do that.”
ClearVue has validated the new process with AGC Interpane in Germany, one of Europe’s leading flat glass processors and part of AGC Glass Europe. The company’s Gen 3 Vision Glass units were cleaned, coated and tested on the same production line using the same settings employed for conventional float glass, with no changes to the coating process.
The test results follow a busy run of commercial and technical milestones for ClearVue, including its Canva headquarters contract in Sydney, its first European project in Cyprus, an expansion in Hong Kong and India and the recent key certifications for its Gen 3 Vision Glass, junction box and double-glass product range.
In a significant corporate development, ClearVue recently added internationally recognised BIPV expert Professor Rebecca Yang to its board and the company’s research efforts have also received support, with ClearVue and The University of Melbourne being awarded a $280,000 Australian Research Council Linkage Grant to develop techniques for improving the solar efficiency of transparent glass over a three-year programme.
With façade makers able to process the product through existing industrial supply chains, the latest breakthrough looks like a key technological leap in ClearVue’s bid to turn glass from a passive building skin into an energy-producing building material which also offers the option of thermal insulation.
For a company chasing the global net-zero construction market, this is exactly the sort of technological upgrade which could help move the sales chat from merely “interesting” to genuinely “specifiable”.
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