Sustainable Silicone
Building Blocks for Carbon Neutrality
Presented on August 5, 2020 at Facade Tectonics 2024 World Congress
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Overview
Abstract
Silicone materials have a long history in high performance building projects. Known for durability, they can reduce a building’s carbon footprint by improving energy performance.
Historically, silicone materials’ performance attributes enabled 50 years of successful applications in structural silicone glazing and use as a thermal break in energy-efficient glazing. Looking to the future, silicone-powered technologies will influence improved energy performance via unique secondary sealant technologies and hybrid materials.
Leveraging past knowledge, looking at present research and envisioning future technologies, silicone materials will be a vital building block for innovation to achieve carbon neutrality in building performance.
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Introduction
Room-temperature-vulcanizing (RTV) sealants rely on moisture in the air to crosslink polymers into a cured rubber with a range of physical properties depending on the polymer backbone. Once crosslinked, these
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History of Silicone Materials for Sustainable Buildings
An early use of silicone materials in construction was weathersealing horizontal glass tubes around the perimeter of a building located on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Climate Zone
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Structural Silicone Glazing
Structural silicone glazing originated in the 1960s when a sealant was used to stiffen the connection between glass plates to an interior glass fin to give the appearance of an
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Durability of Silicone-Based Materials
Durability of silicone-based materials is derived from its molecular composition (Noll, 2012). The polymer backbone is comprised of alternating silicon and oxygen molecules, as shown in Figure 4. Like the
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Hybrid Sealants
Hybrid sealants are formulated from combined chemistry sets of a different polymer backbone to a different reactive end to leverage the different performance characteristics of each (Klosowski, et. al., 2016)
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Conclusion and Future Work
Silicones have been a fundamental chemistry building block for high performance buildings for decades. Elasticity and weatherability enabled silicone-based materials to provide durable performance to manage air and water infiltration
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Rights and Permissions
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