Radiative cooling fabric creates a thermally comfortable environment without energy input, providing a sustainable approach to personal thermal management. However, most currently reported fabrics mainly focus on outdoor cooling, ignoring to achieve simultaneous cooling both indoors and outdoors, thereby weakening the overall cooling performance. Herein, a full-scale structure fabric with selective emission properties is constructed for simultaneous indoor and outdoor cooling. The fabric achieves 94% reflectance performance in the sunlight band (0.3–2.5 µm) and 6% in the mid-infrared band (2.5–25 µm), effectively minimizing heat absorption and radiation release obstruction. It also demonstrates 81% radiative emission performance in the atmospheric window band (8–13 µm) and 25% radiative transmission performance in the mid-infrared band (2.5–25 μm), providing 60 and 26 W m−2 net cooling power outdoors and indoors. In practical applications, the fabric achieves excellent indoor and outdoor human cooling, with temperatures 1.4–5.5 °C lower than typical polydimethylsiloxane film. This work proposes a novel design for the advanced radiative cooling fabric, offering significant potential to realize sustainable personal thermal management.
Bamboo fibers (BFs)-reinforced epoxy resin (EP) composites are prepared by resin transfer molding (RTM). The influence of BFs surface modification (NaOH solution or coupling agents, i.e., KH550 and KH560) on interfacial properties of BFs/EP composites is systematically investigated. The synergistic effect of hydrolysis, peeling reaction of BFs, and the condensation reaction of hydrolyzed coupling agents are confirmed by FTIR. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) reveal that the interfacial compatibility of NaOH- and silane-modified BFs/EP composites was significantly improved. KH550-modified BFs/EP composite renders optimal tensile, flexural, and impact strength values of 68 MPa, 86 MPa, and 226 J/m. The impact resistance mechanism at the interface of BFs/EP composites was proposed. Moreover, the dynamic mechanical properties, creep behavior, and differential scanning calorimetry of BFs/EP composites have also been carried out to understand thermal stabilities. Overall, the surface-modified BFs-reinforced EP composites exhibited superior interfacial bonding.
1 January 2020 in Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing