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Evaporative/radiative electrospun membrane for personal cooling

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Abstract

Functional textiles that promote daily comfort and productivity must efficiently release body sweats and transmit radiative heat through sweat evaporation and mid-infrared radiation (MIR) (8–13 µm). However, most of the traditional clothing cannot provide simultaneous sweat evaporation and mid-infrared radiation transmission efficiently, leading to a poor design of personal cooling wearables. Herein, an evaporative/radiative integrated functional fibrous electrospun membrane is meticulously designed and controllably fabricated via facile electrospinning technology for personal cooling management. The developed membrane can be applied as a smart wearable with distinct personal thermal management applications. The promising temperature and humidity responsive vapor transmission of the membrane grants 1.2 times of evaporative cooling than that of traditional cotton. Besides, based on its high mid-infrared radiation transmission (53%) property in the range of 8–13 µm, the as-spun membrane provides extra cooling of 1.5 °C than that of cotton. Moreover, the building energy saving performances demonstrated that 47.1% annual building cooling can be achieved using the developed electrospun membrane. In general, the evaporative/radiative electrospun membrane creates a passive cooling microclimate for the human body, meeting the growing demand of wearable for personal cooling.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Contract Research (Development of Breathable Fabrics with Nano-Electrospun Membrane, CityU ref.: 9231419), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Study of Multi-Responsive Shape Memory Polyurethane Nanocomposites Inspired by Natural Fibers, Grant No. 51673162), and Start-up Grant of CityU (Laboratory of Wearable Materials for Healthcare, Grant No. 9380116).

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Author notes

  1. Mohammad Irfan Iqbal and Shuo Shi contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Mohammad Irfan Iqbal

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Shuo Shi & Jinlian Hu

  3. Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Gokula Manikandan Senthil Kumar

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  1. Mohammad Irfan Iqbal
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  2. Shuo Shi
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  4. Jinlian Hu
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Correspondence to Jinlian Hu.

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Iqbal, M.I., Shi, S., Kumar, G.M.S. et al. Evaporative/radiative electrospun membrane for personal cooling. Nano Res. 16, 2563–2571 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4987-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4987-x

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