Developing elastic foamed TPU fibers for dynamically daytime radiative cooling textile with buoyancy function
Yushu Wang, Hanyi Huang, Zeling Wang, Wentao Zhai
Abstract
Abstract Porous materials are widely used in various scenarios due to their advantages such as good thermal insulation, flexibility, and ultra-lightness. Foaming technology has given porous materials more application areas by introducing uniformly distributed cellular structures into the polymer collective. In the past decade, we have conducted systematic studies around the preparation of multi-component polymer microporous materials and functional applications of porous materials. In this work, we propose the preparation of foamed TPU fibers and foamed fabrics (FT-fabric) with anisotropic cell structure using TPU as substrate by micro-extrusion foaming techniques. Thanks to the multistage cell distribution of the FT-fabric and the vibrational absorption of the polymer in the MIR band, the prepared FT-fabric has a near-infrared reflectance of >97%, which enables effective radiative cooling. The porous structure of the FT-fabric endows it with an ultra-low density, which is able to provide additional buoyancy in water. As a conceptual demonstration, FT-fabric is able to function as a cooling and buoyancy support in seaside scenarios, among other functions, providing a viable avenue for new functional garments.