Preparation and cooling performance analysis of double-layer radiative cooling hybrid coatings with TiO2/SiO2/Si3N4 micron particles

Abstract

Passive daytime radiative cooling is achieved by radiating heat into outer space through electromagnetic waves without energy consumption. A scalable double-layer coating with a mixture of TiO2, SiO2, and Si3N4 micron particles for radiative cooling is proposed in this study. The finite-difference time-domain algorithm is used to analyze the influence of particle size and coating thickness on radiative cooling performance. The results of the simulation show that the particle size of 3 μm can give the best cooling performance, and the coating thickness should be above 25 μm for SiO2 coating. Meanwhile, the mixture of SiO2 and Si3N4 significantly improves the overall emissivity. Through sample preparation and characterization, the mixture coating with a 1:1 ratio addition on an Al substrate exhibits high reflectivity with a value of 87.6% in the solar spectrum, and an average emissivity of 92% in the infrared region (2.5 μm–15 μm), which can be attributed to the synergy among the optical properties of the material. Both coatings can theoretically be cooled by about 8 °C during the day and about 21 °C at nighttime with h c = 4 W⋅m−2⋅K−1. Furthermore, even considering the significant conduction and convection exchanges, the cooling effect persists. Outdoor experimental results show that the temperature of the double-layer radiative cooling coating is always lower than the ambient temperature under direct sunlight during the day, and can be cooled by about 5 °C on average, while lower than the temperature of the aluminum film by almost 12 °C.