Infrared radiative modulating textiles for personal thermal management: principle, design and application

Personal thermal management has been a promising technology for improving human body thermal comfort, which presents great potential in reducing energy consumption. Thermal radiation, a main way of heat transfer, is an effective object for regulating heat transfer between human body and the ambience. The suitable and efficient application of thermal radiation in personal thermal management textiles is beneficial to personal thermal comfort and can bring excellent benefits for the fulfillment of energy conservation. Therefore, radiative modulating textiles are capable of maintaining thermal comfort of the human body and show great advantages in personal thermal management. This review is a comprehensive review about application of design strategies based on thermal radiation for developing radiative cooling/insulation and Janus radiative textiles to realize personal thermal management. In this review, the basic concepts of thermal comfort have been introduced and four ways of heat transfer were given a brief description. Subsequently, with thermal radiation as the main character, principles of infrared radiative modulation have been introduced and design principles for infrared radiative modulating textiles are proposed. According to these design principles, three design strategies for radiative modulating textiles consisting of radiative cooling textiles, radiative insulation textiles and Janus radiative textiles will be demonstrated in the following discussions in detail. At the end, the obstacles and prospect of future development of infrared radiative modulating textiles are put forward.