posted on 2023-12-10, 17:03authored byYucheng Tian, Sai Wang, Ming Yang, Shude Liu, Jianyong Yu, Shichao Zhang, Bin Ding
A low
temperature environment poses significant challenges to the
global economy and public health. However, the existing cold-protective
materials still struggle with the trade-off between thickness and
thermal resistance, resulting in poor thermal-wet comfort and limited
personal cold protection performance. Here, a scalable strategy, based
on electrospinning and solution casting, is developed to create aerogel
micro/nanofiber membranes with a hierarchical cellular architecture
by manipulating the phase separation of the charged jets and of the
spreading casting solution. The integration of interconnected nanopores
(30–60 nm), ultrafine fiber diameter, and high porosity, enables
the aerogel micro/nanofiber membranes with lightweight, ultrathin
thickness (∼0.5 mm), and superior warmth retention performance
with ultralow thermal conductivity of 14.01 mW m–1 K–1. And the resultant membrane with customized
semiclosed walls exhibits both striking wind resistance and satisfactory
thermal-wet comfort (3.4 °C warmer than the cutting-edge thermal
underwear). This work will inspire the design and development of high-performance
fibrous materials for thermal management applications.