Thin film discovery earns researcher award nod

By Chris Morris – The Telegraph-Journal

It’s a hot, sunny day and you need to pick up a few groceries but your dog, Buddy, is in the car and he can’t be left in a vehicle that could quickly become a deadly oven.

In the not-too-distant future, however, you may be able to leave Buddy snoozing happily in the back seat, thanks to Pandurang Ashrit of Moncton and the thin film he is pioneering for applications ranging from car windows to satellite surfaces.

Ashrit, director of the Université de Moncton’s thin films research group, is the innovative creator of thermochromic films that protect against even the most blistering sunlight.

“A car parked in hot sunlight accumulates heat because solar energy enters into the car, heats up the interior and this heat cannot escape because of the properties of the glass,” Ashrit says in an interview from his Moncton laboratory.

“The film we are working on, which I call thermochromic film, has special properties that let the heat go through under normal circumstances and when the film itself is heated to a little higher than room temperature, it starts reflecting the heat … It leaves the interior of the car quite comfortable.”

Patents are being prepared, and there are still challenges to meet in terms of transparency and the ability to mass produce the film, but the huge potential of the discovery prompted the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation to give Ashrit a 2012 R3 Innovation Award for Excellence in Applied Research.

His award, along with two others for scientists John Spray of the Planetary and Space Science Centre at the University of New Brunswick and Jacques Gagnon, of the Coastal Zones Research Institute in Shippagan, will be presented at a gala in Fredericton on Wednesday evening.

Apart from windows, there is excitement about the potential use of thin films on satellites.

“Satellites go through a big thermal shock every time they are facing the sun during their orbit – intense radiation hits the surface of the satellites,” Ashrit says.

“As soon as they come into the shade of the earth, it is very cold temperature because they are in space. So every 90 minutes or so they go through this thermal shock.”

He says that to protect the interior of the satellites, a complex cooling system is used that takes up a lot of space and weight. By using thin film instead, satellites would have a significant amount of additional space for other uses.

Ashrit’s thin film is only 300 nanometres thick and could be applied to the outside of the satellite to protect it.

The team has been in talks with the Canadian Space Agency and several companies have expressed interest.

Another groundbreaking invention by Ashrit is a tunable photonic crystal patented in 2010 that has the telecommunications industry playing catch-up.

Simply put, it will allow Internet service providers to split the light upon which data currently travels into different “colour channels.” Voice data could travel on blue light waves; financial on green light waves, and so on, creating efficiency and freeing up bandwidth.

“It’s a bit futuristic,” Ashrit says. “The industry is still in photoelectronic communications. But we are moving slowly towards photonic communication where light will be doing all the work.”

Ashrit has worked at Université de Moncton since 1982 and enjoys being in New Brunswick.

“It’s a very good environment,” he says. “There are some disadvantages in the sense that we don’t have too many industries in the area of thin films and photonic, but the world has become very small today so we can work with partners outside.

“Our wish and goal is to work with local companies and create jobs in this area.”