Manufacturing of breathable, washable, and fabric-integrated squid skin-inspired thermoregulatory materials.

Abstract

Advanced thermal management technologies represent an important research frontier because such materials and systems show promise for enhancing personal physiological comfort and reducing building energy consumption. These technologies typically offer the advantages of excellent portability, user-friendly tunability, energy efficiency, and straightforward manufacturability, but they frequently suffer from critical challenges associated with poor breathability, inadequate wash stability, and difficult fabric integration. Within this broader context, our laboratory has previously developed heat-managing composite materials by drawing inspiration from the color-changing skin of the common squid. Herein, we describe the design, fabrication, and testing of breathable, washable, and fabric-integrated variants of our composite materials, which demonstrate state-of-the-art adaptive infrared properties and dynamic thermoregulatory functionalities. The combined findings directly advance the performance and applications scope of our bioinspired thermoregulatory composites and ultimately may guide the incorporation of desirable multifunctionality into other wearable technologies.