Abstract
Various outdoor scenarios demand both temperature control and self-protection from environment, which are often contradictory from the optical perspective, thus inspiring many material designs on multispectral camouflage and radiative cooling performance. However, these methods on the basis of one-dimensional photonic crystals or meta-surfaces always rely on stringent fabrication and may result in strong angular dependence. Here, we demonstrate an aluminum-polyamide 66 metal-based polymer bilayer thin film through hierarchical design at both the molecular and microscale levels and scalable production, enabling camouflage in infrared (3-5 μm and 8-14 μm) and laser (10.6 μm) bands with efficient radiative cooling in the non-atmospheric window (5-8 μm and 14-20 μm) while possessing weak angular dependence between −60° to 60°. Furthermore, our films can be tailored with specific emissivity and color to balance camouflage and cooling across diverse environments. This work provides a scalable, low-cost radiative cooling polymer film, advancing practical solutions for multispectral camouflage.
Data availability
All data are available in the main text or the Supplementary Information and can be available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
References
Raman, A. P., Anoma, M. A., Zhu, L., Rephaeli, E. & Fan, S. Passive radiative cooling below ambient air temperature under direct sunlight. Nature 515, 540–544 (2014).
Fan, S. & Li, W. Photonics and thermodynamics concepts in radiative cooling. Nat. Photonics 16, 182–190 (2022).
Stevens, M. & Merilaita, S. Animal camouflage: current issues and new perspectives. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B 364, 423–427 (2009).
Stevens, M. & Ruxton, G. D. The key role of behaviour in animal camouflage. Biol. Rev. 94, 116–134 (2019).
Teyssier, J., Saenko, S. V., van der Marel, D. & Milinkovitch, M. C. Photonic crystals cause active colour change in chameleons. Nat. Commun. 6, 6368 (2015).
Xu, C., Stiubianu, G. T. & Gorodetsky, A. A. Adaptive infrared-reflecting systems inspired by cephalopods. Science 359, 1495–1500 (2018).
Cuthill, I. Camouflage. J. Zool. 308, 75–92 (2019).
Wu, R. et al. Spectrally engineered textile for radiative cooling against urban heat islands. Science 384, 1203–1212 (2024).
Lin, K. et al. Hierarchically structured passive radiative cooling ceramic with high solar reflectivity. Science 382, 691–697 (2023).
Zhao, X. et al. A solution-processed radiative cooling glass. Science 382, 684–691 (2023).
Cao, N. N. et al. Challenges to materials for local glacier conservation. Nat. Water 3, 251–255 (2025).
Zhang, J. H. et al. Versatile self-assembled electrospun micropyramid arrays for high-performance on-skin devices with minimal sensory interference. Nat. Commun. 13, 5839 (2022).
Li, D. et al. Scalable and hierarchically designed polymer film as a selective thermal emitter for high-performance all-day radiative cooling. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 153–158 (2021).
Ding, Z. et al. Iridescent daytime radiative cooling with no absorption peaks in the visible range. Small 18, 2202400 (2022).
Zeng, S. et al. Hierarchical-morphology metafabric for scalable passive daytime radiative cooling. Science 373, 692–696 (2021).
Wu, X. et al. A dual-selective thermal emitter with enhanced subambient radiative cooling performance. Nat. Commun. 15, 815 (2024).
Hu, R. et al. Emerging materials and strategies for personal thermal management. Adv. Energy Mater. 10, 1903921 (2020).
Du, X., Li, J., Zhu, B. & Zhu, J. Designing hierarchical structures for innovative cooling textile. Nano Res. 17, 9202–9224 (2024).
Shi, Y. et al. A novel multi-dimensional structure of graphene-decorated composite foam for excellent stealth performance in microwave and infrared frequency bands. J. Mater. Chem. A 10, 7705–7717 (2022).
Tu, R., Liu, X.-H., Li, Z. & Jiang, Y. Energy performance analysis on telecommunication base station. Energy Build. 43, 315–325 (2011).
Zhang, L., Meng, X., Liu, F., Xu, L. & Long, E. Effect of retro-reflective materials on temperature environment in tents. Case Stud. Therm. Eng. 9, 122–127 (2017).
Zhang, Y. et al. A waste textiles-based multilayer composite fabric with superior electromagnetic shielding, infrared stealth and flame retardance for military applications. Chem. Eng. J. 471, 144679 (2023).
Ma, H. et al. Double-sided functional infrared camouflage flexible composite fabric for thermal management. Ceram. Int. 49, 16422–16432 (2023).
Cui, G. et al. Freestanding graphene fabric film for flexible infrared camouflage. Adv. Sci. 9, 2105004 (2022).
Gade, R. & Moeslund, T. B. Thermal cameras and applications: a survey. Mach. Vis. Appl. 25, 245–262 (2014).
Kaushal, H. & Kaddoum, G. Applications of lasers for tactical military operations. IEEE Access 5, 20736–20753 (2017).
Chandra, S., Franklin, D., Cozart, J., Safaei, A. & Chanda, D. Adaptive multispectral infrared camouflage. ACS Photonics 5, 4513–4519 (2018).
Fang, S. et al. Self-assembled skin-like metamaterials for dual-band camouflage. Sci. Adv. 10, eadl1896 (2024).
Lin, Z. et al. Flexible meta-tape with wide gamut, low lightness and low infrared emissivity for visible-infrared camouflage. Adv. Mater. 11, 2410336 (2024).
Woo, H. K. et al. Visibly transparent and infrared reflective coatings for personal thermal management and thermal camouflage. Adv. Funct. Mater. 32, 2201432 (2022).
Kang, Q., Li, D., Wang, W., Guo, K. & Guo, Z. Multiband tunable thermal camouflage compatible with laser camouflage based on GST plasmonic metamaterial. J. Phys. D Appl. Phys. 55, 065103 (2021).
Huang, J. et al. Large-area and flexible plasmonic metasurface for laser-infrared compatible camouflage. Laser Photon. Rev. 17, 2200616 (2023).
Kim, J., Park, C. & Hahn, J. W. Metal-semiconductor-metal metasurface for multiband infrared stealth technology using camouflage color pattern in visible range. Adv. Opt. Mater. 10, 2101930 (2022).
Pikul, J. H. et al. Stretchable surfaces with programmable 3D texture morphing for synthetic camouflaging skins. Science 358, 210–214 (2017).
Zhu, H. et al. High-temperature infrared camouflage with efficient thermal management. Light Sci. Appl. 9, 60 (2020).
Pan, M. et al. Multi-band middle-infrared-compatible camouflage with thermal management via simple photonic structures. Nano Energy 69, 104449 (2020).
Lim, J. S. et al. Multiresonant selective emitter with enhanced thermal management for infrared camouflage. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 16, 15416–15425 (2024).
Huang, L. et al. Multiband camouflage design with thermal management. Photonics Res. 11, 839–851 (2023).
Kang, Q., Guo, K. & Guo, Z. A tunable infrared emitter based on phase-changing material GST for visible-infrared compatible camouflage with thermal management. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 25, 27668–27676 (2023).
Zhou, P. et al. Visible-infrared camouflage with efficient thermal management based on surface morphology regulation. Opt. Laser Technol. 176, 110985 (2024).
Xi, W. et al. Ultrahigh-efficient material informatics inverse design of thermal metamaterials for visible-infrared-compatible camouflage. Nat. Commun. 14, 4694 (2023).
Qin, B., Zhu, Y., Zhou, Y., Qiu, M. & Li, Q. Whole-infrared-band camouflage with dual-band radiative heat dissipation. Light Sci. Appl. 12, 246 (2023).
Zhu, H. et al. Multispectral camouflage for infrared, visible, lasers and microwave with radiative cooling. Nat. Commun. 12, 1805 (2021).
Jiang, X. et al. Implementing of infrared camouflage with thermal management based on inverse design and hierarchical metamaterial. Nanophotonics 12, 1891–1902 (2023).
Li, X. et al. Multispectral camouflage nanostructure design based on a particle swarm optimization algorithm for color camouflage, infrared camouflage, laser stealth, and heat dissipation. Opt. Express 31, 44811–44822 (2023).
Luo, M. et al. Tunable infrared detection, radiative cooling and infrared-laser compatible camouflage based on a multifunctional nanostructure with phase-change material. Nanomaterials 12, 2261 (2022).
Feng, X. et al. Large-area low-cost multiscale-hierarchical metasurfaces for multispectral compatible camouflage of dual-band lasers, infrared and microwave. Adv. Funct. Mater. 32, 2205547 (2022).
Zhu, B. et al. Subambient daytime radiative cooling textile based on nanoprocessed silk. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 1342–1348 (2021).
Aili, A. et al. Selection of polymers with functional groups for daytime radiative cooling. Mater. Today Phys. 10, 100127 (2019).
Griffiths, P. R. Fourier transform infrared spectrometry. Science 222, 297–302 (1983).
Shimanouchi, T. Tables of Molecular Vibrational Frequencies, Vol. 1 (National Bureau of Standards, 1972).
Socrates, G. Infrared and Raman Characteristic Group Frequencies: Tables and Charts (John Wiley & Sons, 2004).
Bruice, P. Y. Organic Chemistry (Pearson, 2017).
Khan, S. A. et al. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy: fundamentals and application in functional groups and nanomaterials characterization. In Handbook of Materials Characterization, (ed Sharma, S.) 317–344 (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018).
Tong, J. K. et al. Infrared-transparent visible-opaque fabrics for wearable personal thermal management. ACS Photonics 2, 769–778 (2015).
Chen, Z. et al. An infrared-transparent textile with high drawing processed Nylon 6 nanofibers. Nat. Commun. 16, 2009 (2025).
Holmes, D., Bunn, C. & Smith, D. The crystal structure of polycaproamide: nylon 6. J. Polym. Sci. 17, 159–177 (1955).
Seguela, R. Overview and critical survey of polyamide6 structural habits: misconceptions and controversies. J. Polym. Sci. 58, 2971–3003 (2020).
Ma, Y., Zhou, T., Su, G., Li, Y. & Zhang, A. Understanding the crystallization behavior of polyamide 6/polyamide 66 alloys from the perspective of hydrogen bonds: projection moving-window 2D correlation FTIR spectroscopy and the enthalpy. RSC Adv. 6, 87405–87415 (2016).
Zhang, G., Li, Y. & Yan, D. Polymorphism in nylon-11/montmorillonite nanocomposite. J. Polym. Sci. Pt. B Polym. Phys. 42, 253–259 (2004).
Ma, N. et al. Crystal transition and thermal behavior of Nylon 12. e-Polymers 20, 346–352 (2020).
Vasanthan, N. & Salem, D. Infrared spectroscopic characterization of oriented polyamide 66: band assignment and crystallinity measurement. J. Polym. Sci. Pt. B Polym. Phys. 38, 516–524 (2000).
Huang, Y. et al. Infrared camouflage utilizing ultrathin flexible large-scale high-temperature-tolerant Lambertian surfaces. Laser Photonics Rev. 15, 2000391 (2021).
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the micro-fabrication center of the National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures (NLSSM) for technical support. J.Z. acknowledges the support from the XPLORER PRIZE. W.L. acknowledges the support from the New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE. This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Programme of China (2022YFA1404704 and 2020YFA0406104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52372197, 51925204, 52002168, T2525033, 62134009, 62121005), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20231540 and BK20243009), Excellent Research Programme of Nanjing University (ZYJH005), research foundation of Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling (14380214), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (021314380184, 021314380208, 021314380190, 021314380140 and 021314380150), and State Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing Technologies (Wuhan Textile University, No. FZ2022011).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Y.J., B.Z., and J.Z. conceived the idea. B.Z., W.L., Q.L., P.C., Y.L., and J.Z. supervised the project. Y.J., B.W., Y.A., T.L., R.Q., D.Z., M.Z., Z.C., and Z.Y. designed and carried out all the experiments. Y.J. and T.L. performed the optical modeling. All authors discussed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Communications thanks Qilong Cheng, Chi Yan TSO, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Source data
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Jiang, Y., Wang, B., An, Y. et al. Hierarchical design and scalable production of radiative cooling film featuring multispectral camouflage. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69045-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69045-4
