Science Daily June 13, 2024
Urban areas have heat island effects that largely diminish the effectiveness of cooling textiles as wearable fabrics because they absorb emitted radiation from the ground and nearby buildings. A team of researchers in the US (University of Chicago, Duke University) developed a mid-infrared spectrally selective hierarchical fabric (SSHF) with emissivity greatly dominant in the atmospheric transmission window through molecular design, minimizing the net heat gain from the surroundings. The SSHF featured a high solar spectrum reflectivity of 0.97 owing to strong Mie scattering from the nano-micro hybrid fibrous structure. The SSHF was 2.3°C cooler than a solar-reflecting broadband emitter when placed vertically in simulated outdoor urban scenarios during the day and had excellent wearable properties… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ