Whether due to increased environmental concerns or a desire to reduce energy usage to save money, many individuals and organizations are embracing LEED certification and the ideas it contains.

Solar Reflectance Index (SRI)

One important aspect of LEED involves the optical properties of building materials, in particular, the notion that a surface with a higher Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) is preferred. The SRI is a single number that summarizes how a surface reflects the sun’s energy and how it emits any energy it is unable to reflect. A building exterior with high SRI will reduce the interior heating of the building and reduce the thermal cycling of the exterior surface itself. This means lower energy costs and slower deterioration of the building’s outer surface materials. The general term for this in the space industry is “thermal control”.

In space the problem is critical. The temperature fluctuations are extreme, there is no air or wind to bleed heat from surfaces, energy is at a premium, and failure to control heat buildup has catastrophic consequences. The heat is primarily controlled through the optical properties of exterior surfaces.

Paints and Coatings
with High Reflectance and Emittance

AZ Technology has been in the business of designing paints and coatings with high reflectance and emittance for spacecraft and instruments to accurately measure such optical properties for 20 years. Our paints coat the exterior of the international space station, our instruments inhabit top aerospace laboratories worldwide, and our expert measurement services are sought by space agencies and large corporations involved in spaceflight, optics development, and aerospace materials development.

Increasingly, we have been providing SRI measurements to developers, manufacturers and suppliers of building materials toward LEED certification. With our advanced instrumentation, the measurement process for SRI is reasonably simple and fast and can be performed on almost any materials, from tiles, masonry, cement, and marble to painted surfaces, roofing, and composites. Thus, we can offer such measurements quickly and at very reasonable prices.