Theoretical and experimental study on optical properties of lanthanum tungsten bronze in visible and near-infrared region

The contribution of near-infrared (NIR) region in solar thermal radiation accounts for almost half, and it brings great cooling energy consumption to buildings when incident indoors. While in the NIR region, most of the thermal radiation energy is concentrated in the low wavelength range of 780-1100 nm. As a typical NIR shielding material, alkali tungsten bronzes has shown great application potential, but its shielding ability at the low wavelength of NIR region still needs to be improved. In this work, nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze have been prepared by solid state reaction method, and exhibit strong NIR absorption in the low wavelength of NIR region. Nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze also shows good photocatalytic proper-ties, its electronic structure and optical properties have been further studied by first principles calculation. Nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze is expected to play an important role in energy-saving windows due to its excellent optical properties.

Automated summary

The near-infrared (NIR) region is responsible for almost half of the solar thermal radiation contribution, leading to significant energy consumption for cooling buildings when it enters indoors. Alkali tungsten bronzes, as a typical NIR shielding material, have shown great potential application but need improvement in their shielding ability at the low wavelength NIR region. This study prepared nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze through a solid-state reaction method, which displayed strong NIR absorption in the low wavelength range. The nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze also exhibited promising photocatalytic properties, and its electronic structure and optical properties were further investigated through first principles calculation. The excellent optical properties of nanocrystalline lanthanum tungsten bronze make it expected to play an important role in energy-saving windows.