A Moisture-Wicking Passive Radiative Cooling Hierarchical Metafabric

Abstract

Developing functional textiles with a cooling effect is important for personal comfort in human life and activities. Although existing passive cooling fabrics exhibit promising cooling effects, they do not meet the thermal comfort requirements under many practical conditions. Here, we report a nanofiber membrane-based moisture-wicking passive cooling hierarchical metafabric that couples selective optical cooling and wick-evaporation cooling to achieve efficient temperature and moisture management. The hierarchical metafabric showed high sunlight reflectivity (99.16% in the 0.3-0.76 μm wavelength range and 88.60% in the 0.76-2.5 μm wavelength range), selective infrared emissivity (78.13% in the 8-13 μm wavelength range), and good moisture permeability owing to the optical properties of the material and hierarchical morphology design. Cooling performance experiments revealed that covering simulated skin with the hierarchical metafabric prevented overheating by 16.6 °C compared with traditional textiles, including a contribution from management of the humidity (∼8.2 °C). In addition to the personal thermal management ability, the hierarchical metafabric also showed good wearability.