Did you know that Saharan ants inspired the development of an electricity-free cooling technology?

Tapping on scientific research findings of their supervisor, Dr Edwin Tso Chi-yan from the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Energy and Environment (SEE), research assistant Shirley Du and PhD student Martin Zhu, set up “i2Cool” to develop and promote zero-energy, low-cost, highly-efficient passive radiative cooling paint to save energy and reduce carbon emissions in cooling buildings.

One of the product’s they developed is a radiative paint, that when applied to the exterior wall of a building, can simultaneously reflect sunlight and dissipate the building's heat into space, resulting in a drop in the building's indoor temperature.

On this episode of Open for Business, we speak with Dr Martin Zhu, CEO and Co-founder of i2Cool Limited, about how ants inspired the tech behind this paint, why 2 academics jumped into the startup world, and what lies ahead for i2cool. I2Cool Limited is a start-up technology company, incubated by HK TECH 300 in the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and Hong Kong Science and Technology Park