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The need to tackle the urban heat island effect demands the implementation of cool surfaces as a mitigation strategy. This study comprehensively reviews the evolution of this research field from a materials perspective. It provides a bibliometric analysis of the relevant literature using the SciMAT software processing of bibliographic records from 1995 to 2020, for the evolution of cool surfaces. The results obtained show an increased interest in the field from 2011 to 2020, particularly for roof applications, and present the scientific evolution of reflective materials. According to the materials dimension adopted by the development of the research field, the study is refined from a bibliometric analysis of 982 selected records for the analysis of five themes: (i) Pigments; (ii) Phase change materials; (iii) Retroreflective materials; (iv) Ceramic materials; and (v) Glass. These materials present promising results in terms of their solar reflectance performances in the mitigation of the urban heat island phenomenon. At the end of this review, recommendations for future studies are provided for the creation of economic and environmentally friendly materials based on waste glass recycling. This study represents a valuable contribution that provides a scientific background with regard to cool surfaces from a materials perspective for future investigations.

Glass wastes that come from recycling plants do not often find a proper use, thus, they are discarded. In order to find future uses for these wastes, this paper explores the characterization of waste glasses (WGs) as a raw material through the assessment of their light reflectance if they were used for external coatings in building materials. To this aim, in this research, several clay-tile specimens were fabricated and coated with three different compositions of waste glass. For these specimens, three variables were analyzed to serve for this WG-based coating characterization: thickness of WG coating, temperature, and holding time of burning. The resulting WG-coated tiles were assessed in terms of the light spectral reflectance and whiteness index, with the help of a fiber optic spectrometer. Results show that the composition of WG had a very significant influence on the light spectral reflectance and the degree of whiteness, with holding time and WG thickness being the most influential depending on the WG type. The temperature of burning was also shown to be critical for the densification process. Finally, an interpretation of these results based on the WG chemical composition coatings obtained by XRF is discussed in this paper.