However, colorless, transparent, white or fluorescent objects are considered to be very inefficient to heat with sunlight because they transmit or reflect light.

Accordingly, we thought that if we should use a material that absorbs only invisible near-infrared light and converts it into heat, we could heat even colorless, transparent, white, or fluorescent objects.

Functions of the light-absorbing and photo-thermal conversion realized by Sumitomo Metal Mining’s transparent materials can be applied to various fields.

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Fig. 1shows the change of the water temperature when a water dispersion liquid of each fine particle is heated by artificial sunlight.

SOLAMENT™ is considered to be highly compatible with halogen lamps, because radiators at 3000K to 3300K which is equivalent to halogen lamps mainly emit near-infrared lights.

Halogen lamps have a conversion efficiency of around 90% for all electromagnetic waves, including infrared rays, and are a very efficient heating means, so they also contribute greatly to reducing the global environmental burden.

Since Sumitomo Metal Mining’s SOLAMENT™ strongly absorbs the near-infrared rays in sunlight and convert them into heat, it shows a remarkable effect of water temperature rise even in the high transmittance range to warm up the transparent water.

*SOLAMENT™ is a material technology brand made from CWO™, nanoscale particles that have the unique ability to absorb NIR, invented by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. These and covered by patents and trademarks in both Japan and internationally.

We prepared four kinds of water dispersion liquid in which different near-infrared absorption nano particles were dispersed. Then, we measured temperature rise of the water dispersion liquid when it was irradiated with artificial sunlight for 20 miniutes.　As the standard datum, we measured  temperature rise of pure water in the same condition.　At last, we calculated the contribution of each particle to temperature rise from the difference of temperature rise between water dispersion liquid and pure water.

In other words, SOLAMENT™ is not only near-infrared absorption materials but also excellent transparent photo-thermal conversion material.