Approach to fabricating high-performance cooler with near-ideal emissive spectrum for above-ambient air temperature radiative cooling

Abstract Radiative cooling is a passive cooling method that can radiate heat into the universe through transparent atmospheric windows. A good radiative cooler should possess not only a suitable emissive spectrum profile but also characteristics such as flexibility, large-area, low-cost, and angle-independency. To satisfy these demands, we propose an approach to fabricate a photonic crystal-structured UV-curable adhesive (PCSUVA) on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate using UV nanoimprint lithography. The PCSUVA-based radiative cooler has a near-ideal emissive spectrum in the wavelength range of 0.4–25 μm and the cooler is successful in cooling its object, no matter the object needs sunlight or not. When the PCSUVA is coated on a transparent substrate (i.e. PET), it can reduce the temperature of the underlying silicon wafer by 1.2 ± 0.2 °C, and when the PCSUVA is coated on PET backed with an Ag layer, it can reduce the temperature of the underlying silicon wafer by 7.7 ± 0.2 °C on a summer day. The achieved cooling effect can be attributed to the reflection of sunlight by the Ag layer and the thermal emission of the PCSUVA. The approach is cost-effective, making it a suitable candidate for a flexible, large-area, low-cost, and angle-independent radiative cooler.

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