4.6 Article

Electrochromic WO3 thin films attain unprecedented durability by potentiostatic pretreatment

Journal

JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 7, Issue 6, Pages 2908-2918

Publisher

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c8ta09621j

Keywords

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Funding

  1. Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT)
  2. European Research Council under the European Community [267234]
  3. China Scholarship Council
  4. VR-RFI [821-2012-5144, 2017-00646_9]
  5. Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) [RIF14-0053]

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Electrochromic windows and glass facades are able to impart energy efficiency jointly with indoor comfort and convenience. Long-term durability is essential for practical implementation of this technology and has recently attracted broad interest. Here we show that a simple potentiostatic pretreatment of sputterdeposited thin films of amorphous WO3-the most widely studied electrochromic material-can yield unprecedented durability for charge exchange and optical modulation under harsh electrochemical cycling in a Li-ion-conducting electrolyte and effectively evades harmful trapping of Li. The pretreatment consisted of applying a voltage of 6.0 V vs. Li/Li+ for several hours to a film backed by a transparent conducting In2O3: Sn layer. Associated compositional and structural modifications were probed by several techniques, and improved durability was associated with elemental intermixing at the WO3/ITO and ITO/glass boundaries as well as with carbonaceous solid-electrolyte interfacial layers on the WO3 films. Our work provides important new insights into long-term durability of ion-exchange-based devices.

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