Bioinspired Biodegradable Sandwich-Structured Porous Metafabric for Passive Personal Thermal Management

Abstract

Integrating passive radiative cooling techniques with wearable fabrics has gained prominence in addressing global warming-induced energy demands, environmental concerns, and health risks due to their superior and practical personal thermal management capabilities. However, conventional passive radiative fabrics are normally static, thereby failing to dynamically respond to ever-changing and uncontrollable environmental conditions, posing significant challenges to dynamic regulation in personal thermal management. Herein, inspired by the multilayered architecture of the bright silver scales of Curetis Acuta Moore, an electrospun sandwich structure is developed, which integrates passive radiative cooling and latent heat storage, concurrently achieving sub-ambient cooling and efficient thermal shock resistance. The sandwich biodegradable phase-change metafabric (SBPM) is developed that achieves excellent radiative cooling performance with a sub-ambient temperature drop of 6.8 °C under sunlight, including ultrahigh solar reflectance (97.2%) and infrared emittance (92.3%). The average temperature rises 1.8 °C above the ambient temperature due to the phase-change material releasing latent heat when the temperature is lower than the comfortable temperature of the human body. Furthermore, supported by comprehensive life cycle assessment, this efficient cooling textile demonstrates biodegradability while maintaining a reduced environmental footprint. The temperature-adaptive SBPM enables self-adaptive radiative cooling modulation, establishing a versatile platform for smart multifunctional fabrics that facilitate precision human–climate interaction in real-world scenarios.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords

Sandwich structure / Electrospinning / Biodegradable materials / Passive radiative cooling / Personal thermal management

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.32171693)

China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(Grant No.2024T170115)

Postdoctoral Foundation of Heilongjiang(Grant No.LBH-Z21089)

Heilongjiang Province Key Research and Development Plan Guidance Project(Grant No.GZ20220045)

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Donghua University, Shanghai, China