Skip to content
Duck Technologies

Technology

How KulVue® works

No physics degree required. Start here and it will make sense by the end of the page.

01 · The starting point

Sunlight is two things at once.

Sunlight carries visible light, which we see as daylight, and infrared, which is invisible and reaches us as heat. Roughly half the sun’s energy arrives in each. Both come through ordinary window glass.

All of that energy warms a room, visible light included. But only the visible half does anything for you. The infrared half is pure heat gain, and that is the half worth stopping.

The solar spectrum, by wavelengthA bar showing sunlight by wavelength from 300 to 2000 nanometres. Below 380 nanometres is ultraviolet. The band from 380 to 780 nanometres is visible light, the daylight we see, which KulVue lets through. Everything above 780 nanometres is infrared, the invisible radiation that reaches us as heat, which KulVue blocks.UVVisible lightDaylight · passes throughInfraredInvisible heat · blocked by KulVue300500780100015002000wavelength (nm)
Sunlight arrives as a spectrum, and all of it carries energy. Only the cyan band is visible to us; the infrared to its right is energy we gain nothing from, so it is the part KulVue targets.

02 · The idea

KulVue lets one through and turns the other back.

KulVue is an ultra-thin transparent coating. It contains engineered plasmonic nanoparticles. Plasmonic means the electrons in these tiny metal particles resonate with specific wavelengths of light.

That resonance is the whole trick, because it can be tuned. The particles are tuned to intercept infrared while letting visible daylight pass. The glass stays crystal clear, and the solar heat gain through it drops sharply.

To be precise about it: the daylight that still comes through carries energy of its own, so a coated window is not a window that admits no heat. It admits the light you want and turns back the invisible heat you don’t.

Think of it as sunscreen for windows. It blocks the invisible rays without dimming the view.

03 · How it’s made

Designed by our researchers, made in a reactor.

Design

Computationally optimized materials

Our researchers use computational modelling to search for the nanoparticle size and shape that blocks the most infrared while staying invisible. Those two goals pull against each other, and reconciling them is the work.

Production

Reactor-driven production

A continuous-flow reactor produces the nanomaterials consistently and at scale, which keeps cost low and quality even from one batch to the next.

04 · Getting it onto the building

Applied to the glass you already have.

No window replacement. No disruption to the people inside. The coating is non-toxic and independently validated.

  1. 01

    The window you already have

    Ordinary glass lets the sun's infrared straight through into the room.

  2. 02

    The coating goes on, on site

    Applied directly to the existing pane. Thin, fast, about 15 ml per m², with no specialist installation.

  3. 03

    Clear glass, far less heat

    The view is unchanged and the daylight still comes in. The infrared is turned back at the coating.

05 · Where we are

Maturity & IP

TRL 6
Validated in real, occupied buildings.
Commercial pilots
Underway with industry partners.
2 patents filed
Covering the proprietary coating formulations.
Manufacturing partner
Partnership in place for scale-up.

See it working in real buildings.

View deployments