Spectrally selective polyvinylidene fluoride textile for passive human body cooling

Abstract Heat stress in hot summer brings serious thermal diseases, thus adversely influencing the economy and human health of the entire society. In this work, novel porous polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fibers and their woven textiles were fabricated for passive human body cooling through combining nanoscience and melt spinning technologies using the in situ microfibrillar method. Because of the high emittance of mid-infrared (94.5%) and opacity of solar irradiation (90.3% for near-infrared and 94.2% for visible light), the optimized porous PVDF textile avoided the simulating human body overheating by 17.7 °C under direct solar irradiance and provided the human body with the same thermal comfort as bare skin.