Flexible Variable Emission Material

Thermal management is an enduring need for all space platforms and vehicles. Spacecraft are routinely exposed to extreme temperature fluctuations, and options for regulating temperature in the vacuum of space are limited and challenging. To address temperature fluctuations, heaters have traditionally been utilized for maintaining warmth of sensitive electronics. These battery-operated heaters significantly increase the craft’s weight and power usage. Conversely, radiators and reflectors are used to dissipate waste heat and reject thermal loading, respectively, to prevent platform overheating. Depending on mission lifecycle, orbit, and whether the mission is manned or unmanned, the respective ranges of environmental conditions will vary greatly as will the crafts survivability standards. Tailorable and variable thermal management systems are therefore vital to the success of next generation space exploration. To address this issue, Plasmonics Inc. proposes to develop a new class of mission-tailorable, and autoregulating, thermal radiator coatings by leveraging its extensive experience in growing vanadium dioxide (VO2) on flexible substrates. VO2 has been investigated for use in variable emittance regulators in the past; however, in all cases the processing requirements appear to be incompatible with space craft radiator materials. Accordingly, Plasmonics Inc. proposes to design, model, fabricate, and test a range of tungsten-doped vanadium dioxide-base (WxV1-xO2)- variable emissivity materials (VEM). Various concentrations of W will be explored to evaluate its effect on transition temperature and VEM thermal emissivity. After design optimization and testing, the team will fabricate a VEM prototype on flight-certified flexible substrate such as Kapton. Demonstration of a successful flexible VEM this technology can be applied to a wide range of markets with the commercial satellite and smart glass as the most promising.