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Best practices for radiative cooling

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Radiative cooling is a technology that dissipates excessive heat without energy input and could address critical sustainability issues. However, the lack of transparency and standardization for reporting of radiative cooling performance risks misgauging the true merits of reported breakthroughs. This Comment discusses the common pitfalls in performance measurement and recommends the best practices for future endeavour in favour of practical applications.

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Fig. 1: Electricity-free radiative cooling technology.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by a baseline from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (BAS/1/1415-01) and the Circular Carbon Initiative (REI/1/5218-01). X.Y. acknowledges the support from the XPLORE PRIZE and The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science and Engineering Program, Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Lyu Zhou & Qiaoqiang Gan

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA

    Lyu Zhou

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Xiaobo Yin

Authors
  1. Lyu Zhou
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  2. Xiaobo Yin
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  3. Qiaoqiang Gan
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Correspondence to Qiaoqiang Gan.

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Zhou, L., Yin, X. & Gan, Q. Best practices for radiative cooling. Nat Sustain 6, 1030–1032 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01170-0

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