Fabrication of flexible smart windows with improved stability

Abstract

The designing and fabricating of the materials with appropriate electronic and crystal structures with improved electronic and ionic transport properties are highly desirable for electrochromic devices. It has been a great challenge for the scientific scholars to synthesize the nanomaterials with improved charge transport properties. Herein, we reported the fabrication of niobium (Nb) doped tungsten oxide (Nb-WO<inf>3</inf>) thin films via low temperature processed sol-gel method. The synthesized Nb-WO<inf>3</inf>films were used as electrochromic (EC) layers for the construction of flexible ECDs. The doping percentage (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and 1.0 %) of the Nb was varied to optimize the EC properties of the ECDs. The impedance results also demonstrated that incorporation of Nb to the WO<inf>3</inf>improved the electrical conductivity of Nb(0.7)-WO<inf>3</inf>. Thus, Nb(0.7)-WO<inf>3</inf>based ECDs exhibited the good optical contrast (ΔT) of 74.82 % whereas pristine WO<inf>3</inf>based f-ECDs showed ΔT of 63.85 %. This work paves the way for the development of flexible ECDs for smart windows applications. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.