Vanadium dioxide
(VO2)-based thermochromic coatings has attracted considerable
attention in the application of smart windows as a result of their
intriguing property of metal–insulator transition at moderate
temperatures. However, the practical requirements of smart windows,
i.e., the high luminous transmittance of T
lum > 60% and large solar modulating ability of ΔT
sol > 10%, are competing to a large extent and hardly
satisfied simultaneously. Here, we proposed a facile and universal
method to prepare VO2 coatings for exceeding the criteria
above using double-sided localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs),
which are excited by the VO2 nanoparticles dispersed evenly
on both surfaces of the fused silica substrate. With subtle engineering
of the sol–gel and heat treatment processes, the morphology
of as-prepared VO2 nanoparticles and corresponding LSPRs
are controlled to achieve a high luminous transmittance (T
lum = 68.2%) and solar modulating ability (ΔT
sol = 11.7%) simultaneously. Further simulation
suggests that the double-sided LSPRs can collectively enhance the
performance of VO2 smart coatings. Moreover, the double-sided
VO2 nanoparticle coatings demonstrate stable performance
with no more than 1% degradation of T
lum and ΔT
sol after 1500 cycles. This
study provides an alternative strategy to obtain high-quality VO2 (M) solar modulating coatings.