Multi-Scenario Radiative Human Body Cooling with a Selective Emission-Transmission Textile

Abstract

Abstract Radiative cooling (RC) is a promising sustainable human body cooling technology. However, there still lacks a RC material that can simultaneously enable efficient human body cooling in both outdoor and indoor hot scenarios. Here, we propose a selective emission-transmission (SET) RC model, which is featured with selective high emission in the atmospheric window waveband (8-13 μm) and high transmission in the remaining mid-infrared wavebands, to guide the design of multi-scenario RC materials. Assisted with designs at molecular and nano-scale, we demonstrated a polyoxymethylene (POM) nano-textile, which selectively exhibits high emittance of 75.7% in the 8-13 μm waveband, high human radiation transmittance of 48.5% (4-25 μm), and also a high solar reflectance of 94.7% (0.3-2.5 μm). As a result, the POM nano-textile exhibits superior human body cooling performance in various scenarios including sunny outdoor (2.6-8.8 ℃ cooling), cloudy outdoor (0.7-3.6 ℃ cooling) and indoor (0.5-1.2 ℃ cooling), compared to existing RC materials and commercial cotton. In addition, the POM nano-textile also possesses good wearability. When the POM nano-textile is tailored onto a protective clothing, it provides better cooling performance than its commercial counterpart. This work provides an alternative pathway towards multi-scenario personal thermal management.