Moisture assisted photo-engineered textiles for visible and self-adaptive infrared dual camouflage

• Published in: Nano energy 2022-03, Vol.93, p.106855, Article 106855
• Main Authors: Liu, Huidong, Wang, Chenyi, Chen, Guorui, Liao, Yutian, Mao, Mingran, Cheng, Ting, Libanori, Alberto, Xiao, Xiao, Hu, Xuejiao, Liu, Kang, Chen, Jun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Camouflage; Infrared; Moisture; Self-adaptive; Smart textiles; Visible
• ISSN: 2211-2855
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2021.106855

Camouflage techniques are an integral part of the natural world. Despite having developed many technological approaches, creating a solution which can simultaneously modulate its visible and infrared appearance remains a great challenge and highly desired. We present a moisture assisted photo-engineered textile that visually blends objects into the surroundings both in the visible and infrared spectrum. In our solution, moisture content inside has been rendered sensitive to ambient temperature variations, allowing the textile to self-adaptively adjust its thermal emissivity in a wide range of 0.8 to 0.27 with the temperature varying from 25.8 °C to 67.4 °C. Its visible appearance can also be tuned using an interferometric structural color filter to deliver a broad range of colors. The moisture assisted photo-engineered textile features a low-cost, biocompatible, flexible, lightweight and convenient approach for visible and self-adaptive infrared dual camouflage. A moisture assisted photo-engineered textile for visible and self-adaptive infrared light dual camouflage is reported. Within the textile, the moisture content can adaptively change with ambient temperature variation, thereby intelligently adjusting the thermal emissivity. Meanwhile, the visble appearance of the smart textile can be tuned via a reflective filter with low emissivity, yielding a broad range of colors. [Display omitted] •A moisture assisted photo-engineered textile for visible and self-adaptive infrared dual camouflage.•The smart textile can intelligently adjust its thermal emissivity in response to surrounding temperature variation.•Visible transparent of the top layer enables tuning the color of the textile to achieve visible camouflage.