Facile "Synergistic Inner-Outer Activation" Strategy for Nano-Engineering of Nature-Skin-Derived Wearable Daytime Radiation Cooling Materials.

Abstract

Natural skin-derived products, as traditional wearable materials are widely used in people's daily life due to the products' excellent origins. Herein, a versatile daytime-radiation cooling wearable natural skin (RC-skin) consisting of the collagen micro-nano fibers with the on-demand double-layer radiation cooling structure is nano-engineered through the proposed facile "synergistic inner-outer activation" strategy. The bottom layer (inner strategy) of the RC-skin is fabricated by filling the skin with the Mg11 (HPO3 )8 (OH)6 nanoparticles by soaking. The superstratum (outer strategy) is constituted by a composite coating with an irregular microporous structure. The RC-skin harvests the inherent advantages of natural building blocks including sufficient hydrophobicity, excellent mechanical properties, and friction resistance. Owing to the subtle double-layer structure design, the solar reflectance and the average emissivity in the mid-infrared band of RC-skin are ≈92.7% and ≈95%, respectively. Therefore, the RC-skin's temperature in the sub-ambient is reduced by ≈7.5°C. Various outdoor practical application experiments further substantiate that RC-skin has superior radiation cooling performances. Collectively, RC-skin has broad-application prospects for intelligent wearing, low-carbon travel, building materials, and intelligent thermoelectric power generation, and this study also provides novel strategies for developing natural-skin-derived functional materials.