Janus Interface Engineering Boosting Visibly Transparent Radiative Cooling for Energy Saving

Radiative cooling technology with artificial intelligence

As sustainable thermal management becomes a global priority, the development of radiative cooling (RC) technology has recently emerged as a promising solution. Simultaneously, recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to revolutionize current research in sustainable cooling strategies. This article discusses the advancement of radiative cooling technology through the integration of AI, tackling the challenging issues arising from the conventional approach and offering strategic solutions to address global issues. AI, capable of mimicking or exceeding human capabilities through various algorithms, enables the efficient optimization of RC structures. Moreover, integrating AI with advanced RC technologies, which have the potential to surpass traditional RC configurations and applications but are still in the early stages, can further accelerate progress in the field of RC. Hence, AI-driven RC technologies will contribute to addressing the increasingly prevalent environmental challenges, further being a leading solution for next-generation sustainable thermal managements as these technologies continue to mature.

Adaptive Thermal Management Radiative Cooling Smart Window with Perfect Near-Infrared Shielding

The architectural window with spectrally selective features and radiative cooling is an effective way to save building energy consumption. However, architectural windows that combine both functions are currently based on micro-nano photonic structures, which undoubtedly hinder their commercial application due to the complexity of manufacture. Herein, a novel tunable visible light transmittance radiative cooling smart window (TTRC smart window) with perfect near-infrared (NIR) shielding ability is manufactured via a mass-producible scraping method. TTRC smart window presents high luminous transmittance (Tlum = 56.8%), perfect NIR shielding (TNIR = 3.4%), bidirectional transparency adjustment ability unavailable in other transparent radiative coolers based on photonic structures (ΔTlum = 54.2%), and high emittance in the atmospheric window (over 94%). Outdoor measurements confirm that smart window can reduce 8.2 and 6.6 °C, respectively, compared to ordinary glass and indium tin oxide (ITO) glass. Moreover, TTRC smart window can save over 20% of annual energy in the tropics compared to ITO and ordinary glass. The simple preparation method employed in this work and the superior optical properties of the smart window have significantly broadened the scope of application of architectural windows and advanced the commercialization of architectural windows.