Professor Shu Yang, Joseph Bordogna Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, Chair of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at University of Pennsylvania delivered a distinguished lecture titled “Bioinspired Adaptive Building Skins: From Nano- to Macroscales” on August 5, 2021. The talk was facilitated by Professor L.Q. Wang (Chair Professor of Thermal-Fluid Sciences and Engineering of the Department of Mechanical Engineering).
In the lecture, Professor Yang discussed the attempts to create energy efficient and adaptive building skins, including highly transparent, superhydropohbic / superoleophobic coatings, structural colors, smart windows that can change transparency depending on the solar gain during the day. By coupling the materials-environment response at the nano- and microscale with CMOS technology, we attempt autonomous tracking/imaging/sensing with feedback control. By exploiting kirigami (cutting and folding) strategies, we demonstrate scalability of geometry and reconfigurability in water harvesting and self-cooling building envelopes at the macroscale.