Vacuum insulation arrays as damage-resilient thermal superinsulation materials for energy saving

Summary The building sector, where heating and cooling are the major energy consumers, contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions. Large savings can be achieved if buildings thermally insulated from environment. Existing high-thermal insulation materials, such as aerogels vacuum panels, vulnerable mechanical forces damage, making their installation a significant challenge compromising long-term performance. Here, we report array (VIA) design that combines robustness ultrahigh thermal-insulation performance, with local cells hermetically sealed separated each other. This allows material punctured, cut, or reassembled, thermal conductivity of less than 0.007 W/m-K even after puncture damage. Our potentially realize 20%–40% reduction in annual use for existing building-space only 2 cm added thickness.