Processing bulk wood into a light-permeable passive radiative cooling material for energy-efficient building

Reducing carbon emissions from building materials production and operation would have a huge impact on the global energy and environment. Wood presents great potential as an environment-friendly building material due to its relatively low carbon emission and cost. However, several issues, including the mechanical anisotropic, extremely low optical transparency, and single function, greatly hinder the further application of wood as a building material. Herein, hybrid wood-derived laminates were dedicatedly fabricated through top-down strategy using bulk wood as raw materials. The obtained hybrid laminates demonstrate low anisotropic mechanical factor of 1.14, which was only one-eighth of the corresponding value of natural wood (8.07). Besides, such wood laminates exhibit moderate light permeability (35% of transmittance), which could provide with softening of glare and uniform illumination, thereby reducing the power consumption. Also, the remaining wood cellulose and incorporated inorganic microspheres in our laminates backscatter solar radiation and emit thermal, resulting in continuous cooling with a dT of 12 °C under one solar intensity irradiation. Combined with excellent water stability and self-cleaning property, our laminates are expected to be used as the building blocks for the construction of energy-efficient buildings with low carbon emission.