Electrochromic glass: Turning tungsten into blinds.

Tomorrow's energy-efficient window goes under the name "smart window". Made from electrochromic glass, the window darkens at the touch of a button or fully automatically to prevent buildings from becoming too hot.  

The color changes from transparent through to dark blue entirely automatically, depending how bright the sun is. A tungsten oxide thin film makes it possible. Under normal circumstances, this layer is transparent. Only when a DC voltage is applied and positively charged lithium ions migrate into the electrochromic layer does the layer turn blue.

Plansee supplies the input material for manufacturing the electrochromic layers in smart windows: sputtering targets made of tungsten-nickel and tungsten. Our customers use a reactive sputtering process to create the tungsten oxide or tungsten-nickel oxide layer from this material.

Find out more about the structure of electrochromic glass and our special tungsten and tungsten-nickel sputtering targets.