ABSTRACT
This chapter brings together a range of important issues that impact on energy use in general and, in particular, on the quality of spaces within buildings. Specically, we discuss sensing and purication of indoor air, self-cleaning surfaces, thermal insulation, and storage of electricity. These are huge topics in their own right, and our treatment of each of them will take the form of an introduction, overview of key aspects, and some recent progress. The reader who is interested in more detail could start with the references provided. Figure 8.1 shows one of the materials we will discuss below [1]. It is an aerogel comprised of silica nanoparticles and has a porosity that can be as high as 99% or even above. This makes silica aerogel the lightest solid material known today, and its density can be only about three times that of air. Such “solid gases” are interesting for transparent thermal insulation, as further discussed in Section 8.3.
