The deep space's coldness (∼4 K) provides a ubiquitous and inexhaustible thermodynamic resource to suppress the cooling energy consumption. However, it is nontrivial to achieve subambient radiative cooling during daytime under strong direct sunlight, which requires rational and delicate photonic design for simultaneous high solar reflectivity (>94%) and thermal emissivity. A great challenge arises when trying to meet such strict photonic microstructure requirements while maintaining manufacturing scalability. Herein, we demonstrate a rapid, low-cost, template-free roll-to-roll method to fabricate spike microstructured photonic nanocomposite coatings with Al 2 O 3 and TiO 2 nanoparticles embedded that possess 96.0% of solar reflectivity and 97.0% of thermal emissivity. When facing direct sunlight in the spring of Chicago (average 699 W/m 2 solar intensity), the coatings show a radiative cooling power of 39.1 W/m 2 . Combined with the coatings' superhydrophobic and contamination resistance merits, the potential 14.4% cooling energy-saving capability is numerically demonstrated across the United States.

The deep space’s coldness (~4K) provides a ubiquitous and inexhaustible thermodynamic resource to suppress the cooling energy consumption. However, it is nontrivial to achieve sub-ambient radiative cooling during daytime under strong direct sunlight, which requires rational and delicate photonic design for simultaneous high solar reflectivity (> 94%) and thermal emissivity. A great challenge arises when trying to meet such strict photonic microstructure requirements while maintaining manufacturing scalability. Herein, we demonstrate a rapid, low-cost, template-free roll-to-roll method to fabricate spike microstructured photonic nanocomposite coatings with Al2O3 and TiO2 nanoparticles embedded that possess 97.5% of solar reflectivity and 98.6% of thermal emissivity. A novel Roll-to-roll Defects Coefficient is proposed to predict the microstructure density. When facing direct sunlight at summer noon (806 W/m2 solar intensity), the meta-coatings show a radiative cooling power of 99.2 W/m2. Combined with the coatings’ superhydrophobic and contamination resistance merits, the potential 15.1% cooling energy saving capability is numerically demonstrated across the United States.

Bioinspired Micro/Nano textured rough topography of a surface has many applications in super-hydrophobicity, self-cleaning surface, anti-icing coatings, anti-biofouling, and drag reduction surfaces. The role of hierarchical and complex surface topography in nature is to amplify the hydrophobicity and maximize the fouling resistance. Thus, a similar micro- and nano-scale 3-D topographic surfaces inspired from the nature were fabricated using a simple and scalable two roll coating process. This process was based on the ribbing instabilities associated with the shearing of non-Newtonian fluids between two rollers. The polymer composite retains the deformed shape due to the recovery of high-viscosity after removing the shear stress. The relationship between the process conditions and the textured structure were studied with the shear rate, capillary number and the surface roughness parameters (e.g., Wenzel factor and density of peaks). The results showed that the samples’ Wenzel roughness factor increased with the increase in shear rate up to a particular value and then decreased. Similarly, the density of peaks in the sample increased with an increase in capillary number up to a particular value and then decreased. These bioinspired surfaces with hierarchical textured patterns produced using two roll coating process show a tremendous potentiality to be used in super-hydrophobic, anti-biofouling, and drag reduction applications.