Research by Yang, Yu, & Mandal '19 Licensed to ChillSkyn

ChillSkyn, a startup commercializing Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling technology (developed by Columbia Engineering faculty, Prof. Yuan Yang and Prof. Nanfang Yu and APAM alumn, Dr. Jyotirmoy Mandal ‘19) raised $1.94M in seed funding led by TandemLaunch Ventures III and IV, Cycle Momentum, and a group of angel investors.

Dr. Yuan Yang, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, designs, characterizes and analyzes materials and devices for electrochemical energy storage and conversion (e.g. batteries, water splitting), and thermal management (e.g. solar absorber). He has worked on the fabrication of novel electrodes for next-generation batteries, such as solid state batteries to address safety issue in Li-ion batteries, and Li-S batteries for increasing battery energy density. He also designs new battery architecture, such as transparent batteries and flexible batteries.  

Dr, Nanfang Yu, Associate Professor of Applied Phyiscs and Applied Mathematics, studies the interaction between light and structured active materials at the nanometer scale and builds novel devices including lasers, detectors, and active components for controlling light.  He has found that nanostructured materials usually turn out to be superb solutions for the generation, control, and detection of infrared waves with long wavelengths. For example, quantum cascade lasers, the most popular coherent infrared light sources, are made of semiconductor superlattices, which comprise a stack of nanometer-thick semiconductors, the thinnest layer being only a few atoms thick.

Dr. Jyotirmoy Mandal ‘19, is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. His research involves understanding and controlling nano-to-macro scale radiative heat flows in both natural environments and artificial surfaces, with characterizing and mitigating ambient heat in a warming world as a guiding theme

For more information about the research behind this technology, see the patent:  Y. Yang, J. Mandal and N. F. Yu, “Scalable Method of Fabricating Structured Polymer for Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling and Other Applications”, WO-2019113596 (2017), licensed to ChillSkyn. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-12210146-B2