Saito, a researcher in ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division, leads the work for ORNL with support from Natasha Ghezawi, a Bredesen Center student. The Bredesen Center is an educational partnership managed by the University of Tennessee–Oak Ridge Innovation Institute focused on doctoral programs aligned with convergent research areas shared by both institutions. 

Former ORNL researchers Kaushik Biswas, David Wood, Kelsey Grady and Pengfei Cao contributed to the inventions. ORNL’s Catalin Gainaru, an R&D associate in the Chemical Sciences Division; Diana Hun, group leader for Building Envelope Materials Research; and the experts at the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center, or BTRIC, a DOE user facility at ORNL, provided support for the CRADA work.

Building envelope components — walls, windows and roofs — account for nearly 8.5% of total energy consumption in the United States. Adding materials that can better resist heat flow to an existing building envelope can significantly lower the building’s carbon footprint. The development of highly durable high-performance insulation materials is critical to meeting decarbonization goals for the buildings sector.

Vacuum insulation panels, or VIPs, are a thermal insulation material used in refrigeration that have exceptionally low thermal conductivity but can be easily damaged in transit or during installation. 

“If a panel can self-heal right after it is damaged, it is possible to significantly reduce the loss in thermal conductivity, maintain the vacuum within the panel and yield a product that is more reliable during installation and its overall lifetime,” said Saito.

The roll-to-roll coating process involves coating both sides of a separator substrate with a curing agent slurry and a curable resin slurry. Protective layers are interleaved during the coating process to create a multi-layered barrier film.

This Oak Ridge National Laboratory news article "Coatings manufacturer and ORNL partner Flexcon licenses self-healing film technology" was originally found on https://www.ornl.gov/news