  The poor thermal insulating building windows, especially single pane windows,
are wasting ~7% of the total energy consumed by the U.S. every year. This paper
presents an electrostatic force suspended polymer-air multilayer (EPAM)
structure as a highly transparent and energy efficient window retrofitting
solution for low-income single pane window users. To provide controllable and
stable suspension force between large size compliant polymer films without
deteriorating their visual transmittance (Vt), corona discharge (CD) was
induced to permanently charge polymer films, leading to controllable permanent
surface potential difference between two sides of CD charged films.
Liquid-solid contact electrification (CE) was combined with CD to realize
precise control of the surface potential of each side of polymer films. CD+CE
treated films can obtain programmable and stable electrostatic forces to form
resilient EPAM structures for cost and energy effective window retrofitting
purpose. The resilient EPAM retrofitted windows can provide U-factor lower than
0.5 Btu/hr/ft2/{\deg}F, Vt higher than 70%, haze lower than 1.6% at cost lower
than $7.4/ft2, at least 10 times cheaper than double pane windows. The energy
saved by EPAM can reach as much as the order of 106 kJ/m2 per year. The CD+CE
surface potential programming solution also provides a highly repeatable and
controllable way for other electrical potential related technologies.
