Polyethylene aerogel enables all-day subambient radiative cooling
Oct 30, 2019

Congratulations to Arny Leroy, Bikram Bhatia, Colin Kelsall, Lin Zhao, Lenan Zhang as well as their collaborators in Chile for their recent work on radiative cooling using polyethylene aerogel which was featured on MIT News. This novel ultra low thermal conductivity material reflects sunlight while being infrared transparent, a combination of thermal and optical properties that have not been demonstrated until now. By putting polyethylene aerogel on top of existing radiative cooling emitters, parasitic solar absorption and heat gains from the ambient air can be minimized and better cooling can be achieved.This work will improve the performance of existing radiative coolers and enable new applications such as passive refrigeration and air conditioning.

Read more on MIT News and the paper here.