Design of scene-adaptive infrared camouflage emitter based on Au-VO2-Al2O3-Au metamaterials

Infrared (IR) camouflage is used to conceal objects in infrared vision for confrontation with infrared detection in civilian and military applications. Nowadays, it gets more and more concerns. Many IR camouflage emitters usually concentrate on one application scene, whereas it is the trend to develop tunable IR camouflage emitter applied in multiple scenes. Here, we propose a scene-adaptive IR camouflage emitter with two modes of “0” and “1”. It can switch modes to adapt different application scenes according to object temperature. The emitter can switch to mode “0” for low-temperature (below 341K) object, such as civilian and military architectures. It can achieve IR camouflage and radiative cooling in 5-8μm simultaneously. The emitter can switch to mode “1” for high-temperature (above 341K) object. The average emissivity in 3-14μm plunges to 0.2. It can achieve well performed infrared camouflage. We believe that the proposed emitter can facilitate development in adaptive thermal camouflage, thermal management and multi-purpose camouflage device.