GreenAgroFood
Designing a spectral coating that doesn't exist — before spending a dollar in the lab.
Sunlight reaching a greenhouse is roughly 5% UV, 43% PAR (the light plants use), and 52% near-infrared (NIR). That NIR passes straight through conventional plastic film and converts entirely to heat inside the structure.
Composition of incoming solar radiation
Removing that heat with HVAC accounts for 25–40% of total greenhouse operating cost. Growers are paying to cool down energy they never needed in the first place.
We are developing a nanoparticle-based coating applied to standard greenhouse plastic that transmits only PAR (the wavelengths plants photosynthesise with) while reflecting NIR before it ever enters the structure.
Instead of years of trial-and-error at the lab bench, we use AI trained on crystal structures, quantum physics, and optical spectra to screen 100,000+ candidate materials virtually — before synthesising a single one.
Pull every known NIR-absorbing material from databases like the Materials Project (150,000+ compounds).
Each material is described numerically — elements, crystal structure, electron arrangement — like a chemical barcode.
A quantum-mechanics simulation (DFT) predicts the full optical spectrum of each candidate from first principles. No spectrometer needed.
A trained model ranks all candidates on NIR block, PAR transmission, stability, and dispersibility. The chemist walks into the lab with 5–8 winners — not 500.
Synthesise → characterise → reformulate → repeat. 50–200 iterations over years before a viable candidate emerges.
Screen 100,000 candidates computationally in weeks. Synthesise only the top 8. Months instead of years. A fraction of the cost.
Once the top film candidates are synthesised, we validate performance with controlled hoophouse tunnel trials — comparing our AI-designed films against a plain control and the best incumbent product on the market.
Weekly measurement of air temperature, plant growth, soil moisture, and total biomass at harvest.
NIR rejection on a greenhouse film and NIR rejection on a building envelope are the same optics problem. The identical material and discovery pipeline can address:
NIR-reflective coatings on roofs and walls to reduce cooling load for commercial and industrial buildings.
Data centres spend ~40% of energy on cooling. The same film applied to envelopes and glazing cuts solar heat gain passively.
Retrofit existing glazing with spectrally-selective NIR-blocking film — same formulation, standard application.
Same material. Same discovery pipeline. Zero additional R&D.