Infrared-Radiation-Enhanced Nanofiber Membrane for Sky Radiative Cooling of the Human Body

Extreme heat events are mainly responsible for weather-related human mortality due to climate change. However, there is a lack of outdoor thermal management for protecting people from extreme heat events. We present a novel infrared-radiation-enhanced nanofiber membrane (NFM) that has good infrared resonance absorption and selectively radiates thermal radiation of the human body through the atmosphere and into the cold outer space. The NFM comprises polyamide 6 (PA6) nanofibers and randomly distributed SiO2 submicron spheres and has sufficient air permeability and thermal-moisture comfortability because of its interconnect nanopores and micropores. We measure the sky radiative cooling performance under a clear sky, and PA6/SiO2 NFM produces temperatures that are about 0.4-1.7 °C lower than those of commercial textiles when covering dry and wet hands and temperatures 1.0-2.5 °C lower than the ambient temperature when thermal conduction and convection are isolated in a closed device. Our processed PA6/SiO2 NFM combines sky radiative cooling with thermal management of the human body very well, which will promote the development of radiative cooling textiles.