Hygroscopic Lithium Chloride-Enhanced Composite Coating for Efficient Passive Cooling Textiles
摘要
Radiative cooling technology as an ability of temperature reduction without consuming external power input attracts attention with its application potential in many different areas, from personal thermal management applications to water harvesting. Nevertheless, many reported passive radiative cooling materials face difficulties of complex and costly production processes. Herein, an efficient passive cooling textile was developed using hygroscopic lithium chloride (LiCl)-enhanced composite coating (thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)-silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoparticles) with high infrared emission and solar reflectance through simple and scalable production method. Besides chemical structure analysis, radiative emissivity and solar reflectance of the samples were determined by FT-IR and UV-VIS-NIR spectrometer integrated with a diffuse integrating sphere. Also, cooling performance was measured by using self-made hotplate system under simulated condition. LiCl and tandem TPU-SiO2 composite coated samples especially at higher nanoparticle content exhibit higher reflectance in the solar spectrum and emissivity in the atmospheric window compared to reference ones. Under 600 W m−2 simulating sunlight exposure, test results show that these samples can achieve an efficient passive radiative cooling performance with temperature decrease of 15.44 and 20.51 °C compared to cotton and the uncoated/reference form, respectively. This work paves a new path in developing new textile-based materials for applications in the field of personal thermal management and also radiative cooling based atmospheric water harvesting.