Efficient Warming Textile Enhanced by a High‐Entropy Spectrally Selective Nanofilm with High Solar Absorption

• Published in: Advanced science 2023-01, Vol.10 (3), p.e2204817-n/a
• Main Authors: He, Cheng‐Yu, Zhao, Peng, Zhang, Hong, Chen, Kai, Liu, Bao‐Hua, Lu, Zhong‐Wei, Li, Yang, La, Pei‐Qing, Liu, Gang, Gao, Xiang‐Hu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cotton; Efficiency; Energy consumption; Heat; high‐entropy; Human body; Optical properties; personal thermal management; Radiation; smart textile; Solar energy; solar warming; spectrally selective film; Temperature; Textiles
• ISSN: 2198-3844; 2198-3844
• DOI: 10.1002/advs.202204817

Solar and radiative warming are smart approaches to maintaining the human body at a metabolically comfortable temperature in both indoor and outdoor scenarios. Nevertheless, existing warming textiles are ineffective in frigid climates because the solar absorption of selective absorbing coating is significantly reduced when coated on rough textile surface. Herein, for the first time, high‐entropy nitrides based spectrally selective film (SSF) is introduced on common cotton through a one‐step magnetron sputtering method. The well‐designed refractive index gradient enables destructive interference effects, offering a roughness‐insensitive high solar absorptance (92.8%) and low thermal emittance (39.2%). Impressively, the solar absorptance is 9.1% higher than the reported best‐performing selective nanofilm‐based textile. As a result, such a textile achieves a record‐high photothermal conversion efficiency (82.2% under 0.6 suns, at 0 °C). This textile yields a 3.5 °C drop in the set‐point of indoor air‐conditioner temperature. Besides, in a winter morning with an air temperature of 7.5 °C, it warms up the human skin by as large as 12 °C under weak sunlight (350 W m−2). More importantly, such a superior radiative warming performance is achieved by engineering the widely used cotton without compromising its breathability and durability, showing great potential for practical applications. High‐entropy engineering is adapted to the design of high‐efficiency solar warming textile. The high‐entropy coating offers both roughness‐insensitive high solar absorption and low IR emissivity even coated on cotton. The coating is prepared by a facile one‐step sputtering method, yielding outstanding adhesion and anti‐oxidation properties. All these merits make it suitable for solar and radiative warming without compromising its wearability.