Scalable Mie-Silk textile for dual-mode personal cooling indoors and outdoors.

Wang, Yida; Wu, Xun-En; Lu, Haojie; Qi, Le; Zhou, Yaoyao; Wu, Shuying; Jin, Jiongke; Li, Donghang et al. · Sci Adv · 2026

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Radiative cooling textiles are typically designed for specific indoor or outdoor conditions, limiting their environmental adaptability. Here, we report a continuously spun molecular interface-engineered silk (Mie-Silk) that integrates radiative and conductive cooling for effective body temperature regulation in diverse settings. The Mie-Silk has a natural silk yarn core with high mid-infrared (MIR) emissivity and a surface layer of ZrO<sub>2</sub> nanoparticles (NPs) enabling strong solar scattering based on the Mie scattering principle. Natural silk fibroin acts as a robust binder, anchoring the NPs on the silk surface securely. Woven Mie-Silk achieves outdoor radiative cooling through high solar reflectivity (92.54%) and MIR emissivity (97.13%) within the atmospheric window. Indoors, where radiative cooling is less effective, its thermal conductivity (0.19 watts per meter-Kelvin) facilitated by densely packed NPs provides obvious cooling capability. This Mie-Silk, with effective cooling across varied environments, represents a promising candidate for next-generation personal thermal management clothing.