Cooling performance of a bioinspired micro-crystal-bars coated composite fabric with solar reflectance

Abstract Inspired by the cooling performance of the micro-hair from the Saharan silver ants (SSant), we fabricated a novel solar heat shielding fabric with synthesized zinc oxide (ZnO) micro-crystal-bar (MCB) composite. The ZnO MCB composite coating can significantly improve the solar reflectivity of fabric from 69% to 95% (0.4–1.8 μm). A cooling performance experiment reveals that the surface temperature of the modified fabric reduced by 7.6%–17.7% compared to that of an unmodified reference. Furthermore, the results also showed that the modified fabrics have a high far infrared emittance, which can promote effective long wavelength infrared (LWIR) radiation (5–14 μm) and lead to heat dissipation. More so, other important attributes, such as thermal conductivity , solar power intensity and transmittance, as well as mechanical property, also improved significantly after the treatment. In summary, this work provides a unique strategy for the design and fabrication of thermal management fabric for solar heat shielding.