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Electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol)/silica film for radiative cooling

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Abstract

Daytime radiative cooling materials have recently attracted tremendous interest by reflecting sunlight and radiating heat to the ultracold outer space without any energy consumption. While some progress has been made, it remains a big challenge in fabricating highly efficient, low-cost, biodegradable, and sustainable all-day radiative coolers. Here, we report a hierarchically structured poly(vinyl alcohol)/silica film via a facile electrospinning method. The diameters of the electrospun fibers range from several nanometers to several microns, and the silica particles distribute across the surface randomly. The optimal film exhibits sufficiently high solar reflectance (97%) and superior longwave infrared thermal emittance (95%), thus realizing sub-ambient cooling of ~ 9.3 °C during the night and ~ 4.5 to ~ 7.5 °C during the midday under the solar intensity of ~ 700 W/m2. Overall, this film demonstrates high performance of daytime radiative cooling, with an inexpensive and environmental production way compared to those of state-of-the-art designs.

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Funding

The authors thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51803190), 111 project (D18023), National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0706802) and Taif University Researchers Supporting Project of Taif University of Saudi Arabia (TURSP-2020/05) for financial support as well as Zhang San from Shiyanjia Lab (www.shiyanjia.com) for the SEM test. Muchao Qu thanks the financial support from the Guangdong Provincial Colleges and Universities Youth Innovative Talents Project (2021KQNCX046) and the Scientific and Technological Plan of Guangdong Province, China (2019B090905005).

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Author notes

  1. Huijie Zhu and Yajie Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Advanced Material Processing & Mold (Ministry of Education), National Engineering Research Center for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    Huijie Zhu, Yajie Wang, Yamin Pan, Guoqiang Zheng, Kun Dai, Chuntai Liu, Changyu Shen & Xianhu Liu

  2. School of Automobile and Transportation Engineering, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, 510450, China

    Muchao Qu

  3. SCNU Qingyuan Institute of Science and Technology Innovation Co., Ltd, Qingyuan, 511517, China

    Muchao Qu

  4. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, China

    Mina Huang

  5. Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif, 21944, Saudi Arabia

    A. Alhadhrami & Mohamed M. Ibrahim

  6. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, 11884, Egypt

    Zeinhom M. El-Bahy

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  1. Huijie Zhu
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  2. Yajie Wang
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Correspondence to Yamin Pan or Xianhu Liu.

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Zhu, H., Wang, Y., Qu, M. et al. Electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol)/silica film for radiative cooling. Adv Compos Hybrid Mater 5, 1966–1975 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-022-00529-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-022-00529-9

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