Abstract
Atmospheric window (8-13 μm) spectrally selective radiative-cooling textiles can minimize heat gain from the surroundings, especially under the urban heat-island conditions. However, perspiration can substantially degrade this selectivity because sweat has broadband emissive properties. Here, we design an integrated spectrally selective radiative cooling textile with directional sweating capability. Embedded conical microstructures drive rapid sweat transport and shedding, maintaining a dry radiative surface and thereby preserving spectral selectivity. By incorporating 20 wt% silicon nitride particles into polyvinyl butyral fibers, the textile achieves 83.8% emissivity within atmospheric window, 43.3% emissivity within non-atmospheric window (2.5-8 µm and 13-20 µm), and 92.8% solar reflectivity. After sweating, it still possesses 84.4% atmospheric-window emissivity and 45.4% non-atmospheric window emissivity, demonstrating robust spectral preserving capabilities. Outdoor experiments demonstrate that the spectrally selective textile is 2.8 °C and 7.3 °C cooler than broadband textile and cotton, respectively, highlighting its potential for personal radiative cooling in hot urban environments.
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The Source data generated in this study are provided in the Supplementary Information/Source Data file. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The original code used for the Mie scattering calculations in this study was obtained from the publicly accessible MATLAB Central repository (https://ww2.mathworks.cn/matlabcentral/fileexchange/36831-matscat). The codes used for simulation and data measurement are available from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52421003 (D.Z.)), Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of Carbon Emission Peak and Carbon Neutrality of Jiangsu Province (BE2023854 (D.Z.)), the Natural Science Foundation of Distinguished Young Scholars of Jiangsu Province (BK20240075 (D.Z.)), Funded by Basic Research Program of Jiangsu (BK20251269 (S.F.)), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2242025F10008 (D.Z.)), New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE (D.Z.).
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B.G. and D.Z. designed the research. B.G., S.F. and G.L. performed the calculations and simulations. B.G., Q.Z., R.L., G.X. and S.H. performed fabrication, testing, and characterizations. B.G., S.F. and H.T. analyzed the data. B.G. and D.Z. wrote and revised the paper. W.Z. and D.Z. supervised the project. All authors substantially contributed to research.
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Gu, B., Feng, S., Zhang, Q. et al. Preserving spectral selectivity of radiative cooling textile under sweating conditions in hot urban environments. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71966-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71966-z
