Reducing temperature swing and rectifying radiative heat transfer for passive dynamic space thermal control with variable-emittance coatings

Dynamic radiative thermal control is crucial for normal operation and energy saving of spacecraft that cope with changing thermal environments involving heat dissipation to cold deep space, external heating from the Sun and nearby planets, and internal heating from onboard electronics. Variable-emittance coatings, whose infrared emittance can be tuned passively by temperature or actively by external stimuli, could provide a viable solution. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate self-adaptive dynamic radiative heat transfer with variable-emittance coating based on thermochromic vanadium dioxide (VO2) in a space-like thermal environment with a coldfinger and a custom-made sample mount inside a vacuum cryostat. Black Actar and a highly reflective tungsten mirror are used to calibrate the parasitic head load and heat flux sensor sensitivity, while multiple static-emittance samples made of silicon wafers with different doping levels are measured for validation of the experimental method and for direct comparison with the variable-emittance VO2 coating. With the coldfinger at 80 K to mimic external radiative scenarios in space, the tunable coating exhibits a sixfold enhancement in radiative thermal conductance upon VO2 phase transition for promoted heat dissipation, in addition to a reduced temperature swing by almost 20 °C compared to the static emitters. With the coldfinger at 25 °C as internal radiative scenarios in space, similar sixfold heat dissipation from the variable-emittance coating is also observed, while radiative heat transfer is much suppressed with a constant radiative thermal conductance when the coldfinger is hotter than the tunable coating at 25 °C, leading to a thermal rectification factor of 1.8 ± 0.2 experimentally achieved.