Self-adaptive radiative cooling based on phase change materials

With the ability of harvesting the coldness of universe as a thermodynamic resource, radiative cooling technology is important for a broad range of applications such as passive building cooling, refrigeration, and renewable energy harvesting. However, all existing radiative cooling technologies util...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptics express Vol. 26; no. 18; p. A777
Main Authors Ono, Masashi, Chen, Kaifeng, Li, Wei, Fan, Shanhui
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 03.09.2018
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Summary:With the ability of harvesting the coldness of universe as a thermodynamic resource, radiative cooling technology is important for a broad range of applications such as passive building cooling, refrigeration, and renewable energy harvesting. However, all existing radiative cooling technologies utilize static structures, which lack the ability of self-adaptive tuning based on demand. Here we present the concept of self-adaptive radiative cooling based on phase change materials such as vanadium dioxide. We design a photonic structure that can adaptively turn 'on' and 'off' radiative cooling, depending the ambient temperature, without any extra energy input for switching. Our results here lead to new functionalities of radiative cooling and can potentially be used in a wide range of applications for the thermal managements of buildings, vehicles and textiles.
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ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.26.00A777