Abstract
Thermal transfer systems involving temperature control through heating, ventilation, and air conditioning applications have emerged as one of the largest energy issues in buildings. Traditional approaches mainly comprise closed and open systems, both of which have certain advantages and disadvantages in a single heating or cooling process. Here we report a thermal adaptive system with beneficial energy-saving properties, which uses functional liquid to exhibit high metastability, providing durability in a temperature-responsive liquid gating system. With an efficient use of energy, this system achieves smart "breathing" during both heating and cooling processes to dynamically tune the indoor temperature. Theoretical modeling and experiments demonstrate that the adaptive, sandwich-structured, membrane-based system can achieve temperature control, producing obvious advantages of energy saving compared with both closed and open systems through the bistable interfacial design of the liquid gating membrane. Further energy saving evaluation of the system on the basis of simulation with current global greenhouse plantation data shows a reduction of energy consumption of 7.9 × 10(13) kJ/year, a percentage change of ∼11.6%. Because the adaptive system can be applied to a variety of thermal transfer processes, we expect it to prove useful in a wide range of real-world applications.