Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling by Thermoplastic Polyurethane Wrapping Films with Controlled Hierarchical Porous Structures

• Published in: ChemSusChem 2022-12, Vol.15 (24), p.e202201842-n/a
• Main Authors: Park, Choyeon, Park, Chanil, Park, Sungmin, Lee, Jaeho, Choi, Jae‐Hak, Kim, Yong Seok, Yoo, Youngjae
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Atmospheric models; Atmospheric windows; Daytime; Efficiency; Energy consumption; environmental chemistry; green chemistry; Greenhouse effect; Greenhouse gases; passive radiative cooling; Performance degradation; polymers; Polyurethane resins; Temperature; thermoplastic polyurethane; Three dimensional models; Three dimensional printing; Urethane thermoplastic elastomers
• ISSN: 1864-5631; 1864-564X
• DOI: 10.1002/cssc.202201842

Current research has focused on effective solutions to mitigate global warming and the accelerating greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to most cooling methods requiring energy and resources, passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) technology offers excellent energy savings as it requires no energy consumption. However, existing PDRC materials encounter unprecedented problems such as complex structures, low flexibility, and performance degradation after stretching. Thus, this study reports a porous structured thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) film with bimodal pores to produce high‐efficiency PDRC with efficient solar scattering using a simple process. The TPU film exhibited an adequately high solar reflectivity of 0.93 and an emissivity of 0.90 in the atmospheric window to achieve an ambient cooling of 5.6 °C at midday under a solar intensity of 800 W m−2. Thus, the highly elastic and flexible TPU film was extremely suitable for application on objects with complex shapes. The radiative cooling performance of 3D‐printed models covered with these TPU films demonstrated their superior indoor cooling efficiency compared to commercial white paint (8.76 °C). Thus, the proposed design of high‐efficiency PDRC materials is applicable in various urban infrastructural objects such as buildings and vehicles. Stretchable thermal emitter: Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) coolers that can be wrapped on buildings and vehicles are used as efficient passive daytime radiative cooling materials. The bimodal pore structure of TPU produces high solar reflectivity and high emissivity. The TPU coating has a cooling effect of 5.6 °C below ambient temperature.