Passive daytime radiative cooling polymeric materials: Structure design, fabrication, and applications

Abstract

Radiative cooling (RC) technology achieves passive cooling without consuming additional energy by reflecting sunlight and dissipating heat through the atmospheric transparent window via infrared radiation into the cold outer space. It presents an excellent alternative to address the current challenges of energy shortage and environmental stress. While numerous materials and structures demonstrate robust RC performance, polymers, with their inherent and strong infrared radiation characteristics, exhibit significant potential and possibilities in RC due to their diverse structures with designable chemical bonds and groups, large-scale production capabilities, and ease of manufacturing into RC devices. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of recent advances in utilizing polymers for passive daytime radiative cooling. It will explore the relationship between polymer structure and RC performance, discuss design principles for achieving high RC efficiency, examine the production of polymeric materials for coolers, and systematically review and discuss the broad application scenarios of RC polymers. Finally, this review will highlight future perspectives for the development of RC polymers.