Hierarchical-morphology metafabric for scalable passive daytime radiative cooling
Shaoning Zeng, Sijie Pian, Minyu Su, Zhuning Wang, Maoqi Wu, Xinhang Liu, Mingyue Chen, Yuanzhuo Xiang, Jiawei Wu, Manni Zhang, Qingqing Cen, Yuwei Tang, Xianheng Zhou, Zhiheng Huang, Rui Wang, Alitenai Tunuhe, Xiyu Sun, Zhigang Xia, Mingwei Tian, Min Chen, Xiao Ma, Lvyun Yang, Jun Zhou, Huamin Zhou, Qing Yang, Xin Li, Yaoguang Ma, Guangming Tao
Abstract
Incorporating passive radiative cooling structures into personal thermal management technologies could effectively defend humans against intensifying global climate change. We show that large-scale woven metafabrics can provide high emissivity (94.5%) in the atmospheric window and high reflectivity (92.4%) in the solar spectrum because of the hierarchical-morphology design of the randomly dispersed scatterers throughout the metafabric. Through scalable industrial textile manufacturing routes, our metafabrics exhibit desirable mechanical strength, waterproofness, and breathability for commercial clothing while maintaining efficient radiative cooling ability. Practical application tests demonstrated that a human body covered by our metafabric could be cooled ~4.8°C lower than one covered by commercial cotton fabric. The cost-effectiveness and high performance of our metafabrics present substantial advantages for intelligent garments, smart textiles, and passive radiative cooling applications.