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Solar-absorbing metamaterial
microencapsulation of phase change
materials for thermo-regulating textiles
a b
William Tong & Alan Tong
a
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Aurora, IL 60506, USA
b
Neuqua Valley High School, Naperville, IL 60564, USA
Published online: 13 Jul 2015.

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To cite this article: William Tong & Alan Tong (2015): Solar-absorbing metamaterial
microencapsulation of phase change materials for thermo-regulating textiles, International Journal
of Smart and Nano Materials, DOI: 10.1080/19475411.2015.1056270

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 International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19475411.2015.1056270

Solar-absorbing metamaterial microencapsulation of phase change

materials for thermo-regulating textiles
William Tonga* and Alan Tongb
a
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Aurora, IL 60506, USA; bNeuqua Valley High School,
Naperville, IL 60564, USA
(Received 18 February 2015; final version received 25 May 2015)

This paper presents a novel concept for designing solar-absorbing metamaterial micro-
capsules of phase change materials (PCMs) integrated with thermo-regulating smart
textiles intended for coats or garments, especially for wear in space or cold weather on
earth. The metamaterial is a periodically nanostructured metal-dielectric-metal thin
film and can acquire surface plasmons to trap or absorb solar energy at subwavelength
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scales. This kind of metamaterial microencapsulation is not only able to take advantage
of latent heat that can be stored or released from the PCMs over a tunable temperature
range, but also has other advantages over conventional polymer microencapsulation of
PCMs, such as enhanced thermal conductivity, improved flame-retardant capabilities,
and usage as an extra solar power resource. The thermal analysis for this kind of
microencapsulation has been done and can be used as a guideline for designing
integrated thermo-regulating smart textiles in the future. These metamaterial micro-
capsules may open up new routes to enhancing thermo-regulating textiles with novel
properties and added value.
Keywords: metamaterial; microencapsulation; phase change material; thermo-regulat-
ing textile

The incorporation of phase change material (PCM) microcapsules into textile structures to
improve their thermal performance has been studied since the early 1980s [1]. The
formation of microcapsules is called microencapsulation, which, in this case, is usually
carried out by coating individual PCM particles with a continuous film to produce
capsules that are a micrometer to a millimeter in size [2]. Microencapsulation of PCMs
is an effective technique for enhancing thermal transfer, resisting possible interaction with
the surrounding environment, and preventing leakage during the melting process [3]. The
thermo-regulated fibers and textiles can then be made through two different processes [1]:
(a) PCM microcapsules are integrated inside the fiber itself by adding them to a polymer
solution prior to fiber extrusion; (b) PCM microcapsules are attached onto the fiber
surface or incorporated into the textile matrix through coating, laminating, finishing,
melt spinning, bicomponent synthetic fiber extrusion, injection molding, the foam tech-
niques, and so on. Conventionally, microencapsulated PCMs consist of two main parts
[3]: a PCM that acts as a core and a polymer or inorganic shell that forms the PCM
container. PCMs such as paraffins have largely been used in textile applications as either a
solid or liquid that is then encapsulated into a polymer shell and integrated into a fabric to

*Corresponding author. Email: wtong@imsa.edu

© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecom
mons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
 2 W. Tong and A. Tong

improve the fabric’s thermo-regulating properties [4,5]. On the other hand, instead of
using a polymer, specially designed nano-scaled thin film metamaterials can be used.
These materials have been developed for solar absorption and have demonstrated being
able to absorb more than 85% of infrared and visible light [6,7,8]. These kinds of
metamaterials may provide novel opportunities for PCM microencapsulation. With poten-
tial applications in thermo-regulation that extends to textiles and even buildings, these
microcapsules may improve the comfort and value of today’s clothing and buildings.
This paper will demonstrate an innovative concept for using a three-layer nanostruc-
tured metal-dielectric-metal metamaterial thin film as the shell of a PCM microcapsule
with the metamaterial shell acting as a solar thermal resource for heating up the PCM.
Compared to conventional polymer microencapsulation of PCMs, the metamaterial encap-
sulation can also provide largely enhanced thermal transfer, improved flame-retardant
capabilities, and usage as an extra solar power resource for effective thermo-regulating
fibers and related smart textiles.
By exciting plasmonic resonances at particular wavelengths inside the material struc-
tures [9], solar-absorbing metamaterials used for PCM microencapsulation can selectively
absorb solar radiation in three different wavelength regions, including the visual region
from 0.4 to 0.7 μm, the solar region from 0.3 to 3.0 μm, and the thermal region with
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wavelengths larger than 2 μm [10]. One of such metamaterials is shown in Figure 1 [6].
This material is composed of nanostructures with subwavelength tungsten planar stacks
on a tungsten film with a silica dielectric spacer in between. Between a tungsten planar
stack and the tungsten film, strong electromagnetic coupling may occur at selected
wavelengths due to electric and magnetic responses of the metamaterial. The left inset
of Figure 1 illustrates a unit cell of the metamaterial with double-sized tungsten patches of
different widths w1 and w2. The patches with the same width are arranged diagonally such
that the structure behaves exactly the same at normal incidence for either transverse
electric or transverse magnetic waves. Each patch is centered in its quadrant with the

Figure 1. Schematic of solar-absorbing metamaterials [6]: double-sized tungsten patches of dif-

ferent widths w1 and w2, and period Λ′ = 2Λ. The patches with the same width are arranged
diagonally and each patch is centered in its quadrant. Spectral normal absorptance in the spectral
region from 0.4 to 4 μm for solar-absorbing metamaterials with tungsten patch widths of
w1 = 250 nm and w2 = 300 nm, in comparison with patches of single-sized width w1 or w2.
Λ = 600 nm, h = 150 nm, and t = 60 nm.
 International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials 3

period Λ′ = 2Λ [6]. The absorptance of the metamaterials with single-sized and double-
sized tungsten patches is measured, using the same geometric parameters of Λ = 600 nm,
h = 150 nm, and t = 60 nm but with different patch widths w1 = 250 nm and w2 = 300 nm,
respectively [6]. Comparably, the double-sized metamaterial is preferable for PCM
encapsulation because of its broader absorption band, as compared to the single-sized
one with w1 = 250 nm, and its higher absorbance, as compared to the single-sized one
with w2 = 300 nm. The calculated solar energy conversion efficiency is over 85% for
these metamaterials [6] and will be used for thermal analysis of the PCM encapsulation in
this paper.
The tungsten-silica-tungsten metamaterial can be coated on PCM using closed field
magnetron sputtering, which can be carried out at room temperature, allowing different
layered materials, like the tungsten and silica metamaterial, to be coated in the same batch
[12]. Figure 2 illustrates the tungsten-silica-tungsten metamaterial microencapsulation of
PCM (Figure 2a), and its potential applications [11]: coated on the surface of fibers or
textiles (Figure 2b) and embedded in fibers or textiles (Figure 2c). Neglecting the tempera-
ture variation in the coated metamaterial shell and assuming that the temperature distribution
in the base tungsten film around the PCM sphere surface is relatively uniform, since the
thermal conductivity of tungsten is much higher than that of the PCM, a thermal equilibrium
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between the metamaterial solar thermal absorption, QM, and the latent heat storage capacity
of the PCM, QP, can be expressed as (the heat loss from the metamaterial sphere is
neglected as the microcapsule is assumed to be embedded in a thermally insulated medium)

QM ¼ QP (1)

QM ¼ 4πrw2 Js ts ηα (2)

(a) (b)
PCM
rw rP

Silica Tungsten
spacer film

Tungsten Metamaterial
patch shell

(c)

PCM

Figure 2. Illustration of metamaterial microencapsulation of PCM (a) and its potential applications
[11]: coated on the surface of fibers or textiles (b) and embedded in fibers or textiles (c).
 4 W. Tong and A. Tong
 
QP ¼ m Csp ðTm  Ti Þ þ αm Δhm þ Clp ðTf  Tm Þ
4  
¼ πrP3 dsp Csp ðTm  Ti Þ þ dlp αm Δhm þ dlp Clp ðTf  Tm Þ (3)
3

When Tf ≥ Tm, the PCM final temperature (Tf) can be induced from Equations (1) to (3):

3rw2 Js td η dsp Csp ðTm  Ti Þ αm Δhm

Tf ¼ Tm þ   (4)
2rP3 dlp Clp dlp Clp Clp

where rw is the radius of the outside surface of the base tungsten film in the metamater-
ial shell; rp is the radius of the PCM particle; Js is the standard solar radiation at the
earth’s surface, 1000 W/m2 [13]; ts is the working hours per day of the solar-absorbing
metamaterial shell; η is the thermal efficiency of the solar-absorbing metamaterial shell,
85%; α is the sunlight acceptation coefficient of the metamaterial shell, which is mainly
influenced by the light acceptation angle and the light transparency of the medium
around the metamaterial PCM microcapsules (here, it is taken as 0.5, assuming half of
the metamaterial shell surface can accept sunlight and the medium around it is com-
pletely light-transparent); αm is the fraction of PCM that is melted, taken as 1; Δhm is
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heat of fusion per unit mass PCM (J/kg); m is the mass of PCM (kg); dlp is the density of
liquid PCM; dsp is the density of solid PCM; Csp is the average specific heat of PCM
between Ti and Tm (kJ/kg K); Clp is the average specific heat of PCM between Tm and Tf
(kJ/kg K); Ti is the initial temperature of PCM (°C); Tm is the melting temperature of
PCM; Tf is the final temperature of the liquid PCM (°C). Table 1 shows physical
properties of selected PCMs [14,15]. Paraffin C13–C24 can typically be used as PCM
encapsulation for thermo-regulating textiles; paraffin wax has over high melting point to
use for textiles, here mainly for thermal modeling verification, and may be used for
thermal-conforming buildings.
The calculated results according to Equation (4) are shown in Figures 3 and 4 for
metamaterial microcapsules of Paraffin C13–C24 and paraffin wax (Figures 3c and 4c).
The PCM final temperature varies with solar absorbing time for different PCM particle
sizes under different initial temperatures: (a) −10°C, (b) 0°C, and (c) 10°C. For example,
for a typical PCM particle radius range of 15–45 µm, the metamaterial microcapsules
need to be exposed under the sunlight for 2–9 hours to bring the PCM final temperature
above the PCM melting point of 23°C (Figure 3). As shown in Figure 4, however, if the
capsule radius can be shrunk from 5 µm down to 0.5 µm, the sunlight exposure time can
be reduced to less than 0.7 hours or even under 0.05 hours to raise the PCM final
temperature over its melting point, although such a small size may create fabrication
challenges with present technology. These calculated results are in accordance with the

Table 1. Physical properties of selected PCMs [14,15].

Density Specific heat

(kg/m3) (J/kg K)
Melting point Latent heat
PCM type (°C) Solid Liquid Solid Liquid (kJ/kg)

Paraffin C13–C24 22–24 900 760 2900 2100 189

Paraffin wax 64 916 790 2900 2140 173.6
 International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials 5

Final temperature of PCM particles (°C)

93 Ti = -10°C

83
73
5 10
63 20
53 30
40
43 50
60
33 70

23
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
(a) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)
Final temperature of PCM particles (°C)

93
83
73 5
10
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20
63
30
53 40
50
43 60
70
33
Ti = 0°C
23
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
(b) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)

93
Final temperature of PCM particles (°C)

83
5
73 10
20
63 30
40
53 50
60
43 70

33
Ti = 10°C
23
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
(c) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)

Figure 3. For metamaterial microcapsules of Paraffin C13–C24 and paraffin wax (dashed lines) when
the PCM particle radius is 5 µm and over, the PCM final temperature varies with solar absorbing time
for different PCM particle sizes under different initial temperatures: (a) −10°C, (b) 0°C, and (c) 10°C.
 6 W. Tong and A. Tong

Final temperature of PCM Particles (°C)

93

83

73
0.5
63 1.0
1.5
53 2.0
2.5
3.0
43 3.5
4.0
33

23 Ti = –10°C
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
(a) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)
Final temperature of PCM Particles (°C)

93

83
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73
0.5
63 1.0
1.5
2.0
53 2.5
3.0
43 3.5
4.0
33
Ti = 0°C
23
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
(b) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)

93

83
Final temperature of PCM Particles (°C)

73 0.5
1.0
1.5
63 2.0
2.5
3.0
53 3.5
4.0
43

33

Ti = 10°C
23
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
(c) Solar absorbing time (Hour/Day)

Figure 4. For metamaterial microcapsules of Paraffin C13–C24 and paraffin wax (dashed lines) when
the PCM particle radius is less than 5 µm, the PCM final temperature varies with solar absorbing time
for different PCM particle sizes under different initial temperatures: (a) −10°C, (b) 0°C, and (c) 10°C.
 International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials 7

historical reported temperature measurements [16,17]. Previous research work also

demonstrated the feasibility of integrating microencapsulated paraffin with textiles to
obtain unique thermo-regulating properties, and showed that the microencapsulated par-
affin still kept its geometrical profile and heat capacity after 1000 cycles [18,19].
As a starting point, this analysis provides a basic guideline for designing thermo-
regulating smart textiles incorporated with these novel metamaterial microcapsules for
coats or garments intended especially for space and outdoor wear in cold weather.
In addition, PCM metamaterial microencapsulation may have great potential in over-
coming the problems or challenges facing conventional PCM smart textiles [1] with
exceptional advantages, like:

(1) Significantly enhanced thermal conductivity of PCM because the thermal con-
ductivity of tungsten film (173 W/m K) or silica spacer (1.1 W/m K [20]) is much
higher than that of the polymers used in polymer microencapsulation of PCM
(about 0.21 W/m K [14]). This may help promote the heat transfer of textiles and
allow them to quickly reach a relatively uniform temperature distribution.
(2) Excellent flame-retardant capabilities over conventional polymer microencapsula-
tion of PCM.
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(3) Metamaterial microencapsulation can directly provide solar thermal power and
can be incorporated with micro- or nano-scale thermoelectric modules to generate
electrical power for smart textile structures.

Apart from use in thermo-regulating textiles, metamaterial microencapsulated PCMs

such as Paraffin C13–C24 and paraffin wax can be coated on the outer surface of buildings
or integrated into convectional building materials to provide advantageous properties.
In summary, a novel concept for designing solar-absorbing metamaterial microcap-
sules of PCMs incorporated with thermo-regulating smart textiles for coats or garments
has been presented and demonstrated through thermal analysis. The sunlight exposure
time required to raise the PCM temperature is closely dependent on the radius of
microencapsulates under certain weather environments. The metamaterial microcapsules
can not only take advantage of latent heat that is stored or released from a PCM over a
tunable temperature range, but also have the potential to overcome problems of con-
ventional polymer microencapsulation by enhancing thermal conductivity, improving
flame-retardant capabilities, and providing a solar power resource. These metamaterial
microcapsules may open up a new way for providing thermo-regulating textiles and
buildings with advanced properties and higher value. The potential applications of these
microcapsules in textiles may include complex life support and health-care systems,
specialized military uniforms, and performance sportswear.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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