Metal-free design of a multilayered metamaterial with chirped Bragg grating for enhanced radiative cooling

Abstract

A wideband, all-dielectric metamaterial structure for enhancing radiative cooling is investigated. The structure is optimized to reflect most of the solar irradiance window (between 0.3 µm–3 µm), which is one of the biggest challenges in highly efficient radiative cooling coatings. The design is based on the principles of Bragg gratings, which constitutes a simple synthesis procedure to make a broadband reflector of reduced dimensions, without metallic layers, while keeping a flat enough response in the entire bandwidth. Numerical results show that reflection of solar irradiation can be easily tailored and maximized using this method, as well as the net cooling power of the device, about ∼79 W/m2 at daytime (about double at night-time) and a temperature reduction of 23 K (assuming no heat exchange) and 7 K assuming a heat exchange coefficient of 10 W/m2/K, for a device and ambient temperatures of 300 K and 303 K, respectively. This occurs even in detriment of absorption in the atmospheric window (8 µm–13 µm). Results also show the importance of efficiently reflecting solar irradiance for such technologies and its relevance in synthesis and design without using metallic components.