Does Such A Material Exist?

[Guest Sneblot]

I am currently working on a kettle design for a university project and I was wanting to know if a material exists that glows when heated (i.e. from the hot water inside) but stays cool to the touch (so not to burn the user.)?

 

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Ceri]

I am currently working on a kettle design for a university project and I was wanting to know if a material exists that glows when heated (i.e. from the hot water inside) but stays cool to the touch (so not to burn the user.)?

 

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

That is quite a demanding set of properties that you want from your material, you will need it to be thermally insulating, whilst undergoing a thermally induced state change and emit light at the same, time. What might be a better scenario would be to use a double walled glass construction in which you embed LED's at the bottom between the two pieces of glass. Then coat the inner surface of the outer layer of glass with a semi translucent thermochromic ink which will change colour as the temperature state changes. If you want the luminosity to change aswell then you might want to look at using a thermistor in the lighting circuit to increase the resistance and dim the LED's as the temperature changes.

 

If you were to insert a microcontroller and some RGB LED's you could use the changing resistance to alter colour change with brightness in the LED states as the temperature changes. This would allow you to remove the need for the thermochromic pigmentation.

 

This setup will be expensive (as well as being a bit of pain to manufacture) but it should at least give you the colour changing cool touch kettle that you are looking for.

 

I'd be quite interested to see what other solutions are put forward.

[Guest Sneblot]

I am currently working on a kettle design for a university project and I was wanting to know if a material exists that glows when heated (i.e. from the hot water inside) but stays cool to the touch (so not to burn the user.)?

 

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

That is quite a demanding set of properties that you want from your material, you will need it to be thermally insulating, whilst undergoing a thermally induced state change and emit light at the same, time. What might be a better scenario would be to use a double walled glass construction in which you embed LED's at the bottom between the two pieces of glass. Then coat the inner surface of the outer layer of glass with a semi translucent thermochromic ink which will change colour as the temperature state changes. If you want the luminosity to change aswell then you might want to look at using a thermistor in the lighting circuit to increase the resistance and dim the LED's as the temperature changes.

 

If you were to insert a microcontroller and some RGB LED's you could use the changing resistance to alter colour change with brightness in the LED states as the temperature changes. This would allow you to remove the need for the thermochromic pigmentation.

 

This setup will be expensive (as well as being a bit of pain to manufacture) but it should at least give you the colour changing cool touch kettle that you are looking for.

 

I'd be quite interested to see what other solutions are put forward.

 

Thank you for your input, I to will be interested in further suggestions.

[Ronnie_Space 2]

Russel Hobbs did a thermo-color kettle where the material colour changed according to the temperature.

 

http://www.insidedgw.com/episode-985/

 

Maybe worth picking one up second hand (ebay?) and give it a good analysis.

 

Ronnie

[Guest porcelain]

It's very interesting, thanks

[Guest Sneblot]

I have decided to use clear silicon rubber as the insulating material and paint the surface of the body underneath the rubber with with thermochromic ink.