Electrical tuning of radiative cooling at ambient conditions

Passive radiative cooling forms a sustainable means for cooling of objects through thermal radiation. Along with progress on static cooling systems, there is an emerging need for dynamic control to enable thermoregulation. Here, we demonstrate temperature regu-lation of devices at ambient pressure and temperature by electri-cally tuning their radiative cooling power. Our concept exploits the possibility to electrochemically tune the thermal emissivity and thereby cooling power of a conducting polymer, which enabled reversible control of device temperatures of around 0.25 degrees C at ambient conditions in a sky simulator. Besides tuneable radiative cooling by exposure to the sky, the concept could also contribute to reduced needs for indoor climate control by enabling dynamic control of thermal energy flows between indoor objects, such as be-tween people and walls.Funding Agencies|Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Linkoping University; Wallenberg Wood Science Center; Swedish government; Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (faculty grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009 00971]; Swedish Armed Forces Research; Swedish Research Council [2020-00287]; Wallenberg Academy [2019.0163]