Radiative Cooling Meta-Fabric Integrated with Knitting Perspiration-Wicking and Coating Heat Conduction.

Abstract

Radiative cooling is an emerging zero-energy-consumption technology for human body cooling in outdoor scenarios during hot seasons. However, existing radiative cooling textiles are limited by low intrinsic cooling power, high hydrophobicity, and heat-insulating properties, which seriously impede a satisfying cooling effect, perspiration-wicking, and heat dissipation, thus limiting human thermal comfort in practical situations. Here, we developed a radiative cooling meta-fabric that was integrated with high perspiration-wicking and thermal conduction capacity. The meta-fabric included a polyoxymethylene (POM) nanotextile on the front side as a selective radiative emitter, a skin-friendly silicone on the reverse side as a thermal conductor, and patterned bamboo yarns (a cellulose fiber derived from bamboo with excellent hydrophilicity) as the water transport channels. As a result, the meta-fabric could rapidly wick away perspiration (within seconds) and had a high thermal conductivity of 1.5 W/(m·K), exhibiting high-performance human body cooling with a temperature of 10.9 °C lower than the meta-fabric without perspiration. Besides, even without perspiration, the meta-fabric still exhibited a temperature of 9.6 °C lower than commercial cotton fabrics. The work provides an alternative method to design smart textiles for personal thermal management in real applications.