Experimental Study on Energy-Free Superhydrophobic Radiative Cooling Versatile Film with Enhanced Environmental Tolerance.

ABSTRACT

Clean, energy-free methods of cooling are an effective way to respond to the global energy crisis. To date, cooling materials using passive daytime radiative cooling (RC) technology have been applied in the fields of energy-efficient buildings, solar photovoltaic cooling, and insulating textiles. However, RC materials frequently suffer from comprehensive damage to their microstructure, resulting in the loss of their initial cooling effect in complex outdoor environments. Here, a superhydrophobic daytime passive RC porous film with environmental tolerance (SRCP film) was fabricated, which integrated strong solar reflectivity (approximately 90%), mid-infrared emissivity (approximately 0.97), and superhydrophobicity (water contact angle (WCA) of 160° and sliding angle of 3°). This study revealed that SRCP film had an average reflectivity of 14.3% higher than SiO2 particles in the 0.3-2.5 µm wavelength region, achieving a cooling effect of 13.2 °C in ambient conditions with a solar irradiance of 946 W·m-2 and a relative humidity of 74% due to the synergistic effect of effective solar reflection and thermal infrared emission. In addition, empirical results showed that the attained films possessed outstanding environmental tolerance, maintaining high WCA (156°), stable cooling effect (8.3 °C), and low SiO2 loss (less than 5.1%) after 30 consecutive days of UV irradiation and 14 days of corrosion with acidic and alkaline solutions. More importantly, this work could be flexibly prepared by various methods without the use of any fluorine-containing reagents, which greatly widens the practical application scope.