Structure Design of Polymer-Based Films for Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling

Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC), a cooling method that needs no additional energy, has become increasingly popular in recent years. The combination of disordered media and polymeric photonics will hopefully lead to the large-scale fabrication of high-performance PDRC devices. This work aims to study two typical PDRC structures, the randomly distributed silica particle (RDSP) structure and the porous structure, and systematically investigates the effects of structural parameters (diameter D, volume fraction fv, and thickness t) on the radiative properties of the common plastic materials. Through the assistance of the metal-reflective layer, the daytime cooling power Pnet of the RDSP structures is slightly higher than that of the porous structures. Without the metal-reflective layer, the porous PC films can still achieve good PDRC performance with Pnet of 86 W/m2. Furthermore, the effective thermal conductivity of different structures was evaluated. The single-layer porous structure with optimally designed architecture can achieve both good optical and insulating performance, and it is the structure with the most potential in PDRC applications. The results can provide guidelines for designing high-performance radiative cooling films.