Vacuum insulation arrays as damage-resilient thermal superinsulation materials for energy saving

Abstract

The building sector, where heating and cooling are the major energy consumers, contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions. Large energy savings can be achieved if buildings are thermally insulated from the environment. Existing high-thermal insulation materials, such as aerogels and vacuum insulation panels, are vulnerable to mechanical forces and damage, making their installation a significant challenge and compromising their long-term performance. Here, we report a vacuum insulation array (VIA) design that combines mechanical robustness and ultrahigh thermal-insulation performance, with local vacuum cells that are hermetically sealed and separated from each other. This design allows the material to be punctured, cut, or reassembled, with a long-term thermal conductivity of less than 0.007 W/m-K even after puncture damage. Our insulation material can potentially realize a 20%–40% reduction in the annual energy use for the existing building-space heating and cooling with only 2 cm of added thickness.