Urban heat islands, such as Los Angeles, experience more heating than surrounding rural areas, leading to detrimental effects to human health and the environment. “Cool” pigments painted on infrastructure in urban heat islands have the advantage of displaying pleasing colors while also reflecting away much of the sun’s near-IR radiation (heat). Dark objects absorb most of the sun’s light and convert it into heat, which means that there is an increase in energy consumption from using air conditioners. This is extremely important because of the increase in energy demand, lack of energy supply, and rapid growth of global warming. Furthermore, prevailing methods to synthesize "cool" pigments often require several days of heating at high temperatures, increasing detrimental environmental effects. This research presents designing, synthesizing, and characterizing solid-state inorganic ceramic solid solutions towards understanding color tunability in potential cool pigments. It also utilizes an innovative synthesis method using a domestic kitchen microwaves to develop rapid synthetic methods that synthesize materials and potentially control particle size towards controlling near-IR reflectance. Several syntheses will be presented using both furnace heating and microwave-assisted heating to synthesize Co2-xNixP2O7 pigments, and these materials are characterized using X-ray diffraction, FTIR data analysis, colorimetry, and electron microscopy. The heat-reflectance properties are measured using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy in the near-IR region. An understanding of color tunability and the effects of particle size control on heat-reflectance in this family of materials will allow a greater understanding of rational design of cool pigments.

Co2-xNixP2O7 as a potential cool pigment

ACS Spring 2022

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