Biography
Berk Alkan is currently an advisor at Şişecam, where he supports work on electrically controlled glazing technologies for architectural and automotive applications. He holds an MSc in Materials Science and Engineering and is a co-founder, business development lead, and project coordinator at TETA Glass Technologies. In this role, he has worked closely on smart glass concepts, prototype development, customer-oriented project planning, and the coordination of technical and commercial activities. His work focuses on liquid crystal–based and dipole-based electro-optical systems, with a particular strength in connecting technical development with commercialization and turning early-stage material ideas into more practical product directions.
Presentation
Smart glazing technologies are increasingly considered functional components of architectural and automotive glass, in which transparent surfaces must manage daylight, privacy, solar heat gain, visual comfort, durability, and manufacturability within a single material system. The central challenge is not simply to switch transparency, but to achieve a practical balance between electro-optical response, process tolerance, long-term stability, and scalable glass integration. In this context, polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC), suspended particle device (SPD), and electrochromic (EC) glazing represent three distinct materials approaches rather than interchangeable smart-glass solutions. PDLC systems primarily enable rapid privacy control via field-induced refractive-index matching between liquid-crystal domains and the polymer matrix. SPD glazing modulates transmission by aligning absorbing anisotropic particles, while electrochromic glazing relies on reversible redox and ion-insertion reactions in multilayer coatings to regulate solar energy more directly.
Particular attention is therefore given to mesogen selection, polymer–liquid-crystal phase morphology, curing conditions, formulation optimization, and electro-optical response behavior, especially regarding their influence on optical modulation efficiency, angular transparency, switching stability, and manufacturability. The interaction between liquid-crystal alignment, polymer-network formation, and interfacial optical properties is discussed from a materials-engineering perspective to better understand the functional limitations and scalability potential of next-generation smart glazing systems.
Overall, this work presents a materials-level comparison of PDLC-, SPD-, EC-, and PSLC-based smart-glazing technologies for architectural and automotive glass applications, with emphasis on electro-optical behavior, process integration, and practical functional performance. The discussion aims to clarify the technological trade-offs between different smart-glazing approaches while highlighting the emerging potential of LC-based polymer-stabilized systems for future energy-efficient and adaptive transparent surfaces.