Chinese Scientists Develop High-Efficiency Cooling Glass Coating Using Yttrium-Doped Rare Earth Ceramic Technology

Chinese scientists engineer a zero-energy cooling glass coating using Mg2Al4Si5O18:xY3+ ceramics to reduce building and vehicle temperatures via radiative cooling.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 30, 2026, 9:39 AM EDT

Source: Information for this report was sourced from EurekAlert!

Engineering Sustainable Thermal Management Solutions

As global temperatures rise, the demand for energy-efficient cooling technologies has reached a critical threshold. In a study published in the Journal of Advanced Ceramics on April 8, 2026, a research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed a breakthrough in passive radiative cooling (PRC). By applying a dual-engineering strategy to Mg2Al4Si5O18 ceramics, the scientists created a material capable of dissipating heat into outer space without consuming electricity. This innovation addresses the long-standing limitation of intrinsic phonon-polariton resonance, which typically hampers the cooling efficiency of inorganic oxides.

Dual Regulatory Effects of Yttrium Doping

The technical core of this advancement involves the introduction of Y3+ ions into the ceramic lattice to modify its physical and optical properties. According to Prof. Fan Yang, the corresponding author, yttrium doping facilitates a two-fold improvement in performance. First, it induces lattice distortion and breaks local crystal symmetry, which suppresses resonance and enhances infrared emissivity across both atmospheric transparent windows. Simultaneously, because yttrium is optically inert, it widens the material’s bandgap from 3.35 eV to 3.46 eV, ensuring that the ceramic reflects a vast majority of incoming solar radiation rather than absorbing it as heat.

Quantifying the Cooling Power of Ceramic Coatings

The performance of the optimized 10% yttrium-doped sample demonstrates significant improvements over pure ceramic variants. Experimental data shows the material achieves an atmospheric transparency window emissivity of up to 98.39 percent and a solar reflectance of 94.77 percent. When tested as a "cooling glass" coating in the outdoor environment of Xiamen, the material produced a maximum temperature drop of 16.5 °C. Furthermore, the researchers recorded an average net radiative cooling power of 113.1 W·m-2, a figure that outstrips many existing oxide-based cooling solutions currently in development.