Li Jinlei, Wang Xueyang, Liang Dong, Xu Ning, Zhu Bin, Li Wei, Yao Pengcheng, Jiang Yi, Min Xinzhe, Huang Zhengzong, Zhu Shining, Fan Shanhui, Zhu Jia
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Artificial Functional Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, P.R. China.
GPL Photonics Lab, State Key Laboratory of Applied Optics, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130033, P.R. China.
Sci Adv. 2022 Aug 12;8(32):eabq0411. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abq0411.
Radiative cooling and evaporative cooling with low carbon footprint are regarded as promising passive cooling strategies. However, the intrinsic limits of continuous water supply with complex systems for evaporative cooling, and restricted cooling power as well as the strict requirement of weather conditions for radiative cooling, hinder the scale of their practical applications. Here, we propose a tandem passive cooler composed of bilayer polymer that enables dual-functional passive cooling of radiation and evaporation. Specifically, the high reflectivity to sunlight and mid-infrared emissivity of this polymer film allows excellent radiative cooling performance, and its good atmospheric water harvesting property of underlayer ensures self-supply of water and high evaporative cooling power. Consequently, this tandem passive cooler overcomes the fundamental difficulties of radiative cooling and evaporative cooling and shows the applicability under various conditions of weather/climate. It is expected that this design can expand the practical application domain of passive cooling.
具有低碳足迹的辐射冷却和蒸发冷却被视为很有前景的被动冷却策略。然而，蒸发冷却复杂系统中连续供水的固有局限性、冷却功率受限以及辐射冷却对天气条件的严格要求，阻碍了它们实际应用的规模。在此，我们提出一种由双层聚合物组成的串联式被动冷却器，它能够实现辐射和蒸发的双功能被动冷却。具体而言，这种聚合物薄膜对太阳光的高反射率和中红外发射率使其具有出色的辐射冷却性能，其下层良好的大气集水特性确保了水的自我供应和高蒸发冷却功率。因此，这种串联式被动冷却器克服了辐射冷却和蒸发冷却的基本难题，并在各种天气/气候条件下都显示出适用性。预计这种设计能够扩大被动冷却的实际应用领域。
