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Article
Significantly enhanced sub-ambient passive
cooling enabled by evaporation, radiation,
and insulation
Zhengmao Lu, Arny Leroy,
Lenan Zhang, Jatin J. Patil,
Evelyn N. Wang, Jeffrey C.
Grossman

enwang@mit.edu (E.N.W.)
jcg@mit.edu (J.C.G.)

Highlights
Synergistically combines
evaporation, radiation, and
thermal insulation

Stays below wet-bulb

temperatures even under sunlight
with much less water cost

Demonstrates 300% higher

ambient cooling power than
stand-alone radiative cooling

Shows great potential benefit for

food storage and buildings even
in humid regions

Passive cooling, a potential game changer for addressing the world’s growing
cooling needs, is often limited by water consumption or climate conditions. To
tackle these challenges, Grossman et al. present a cooling architecture that
synergistically combines evaporation, radiation, and thermal radiation, bringing
major benefits to food storage and buildings even in humid regions.

Lu et al., Cell Reports Physical Science 3, 101068

October 19, 2022 ª 2022 The Author(s).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.101068
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Article
Significantly enhanced sub-ambient passive cooling
enabled by evaporation, radiation, and insulation
Zhengmao Lu,1,3 Arny Leroy,2,3 Lenan Zhang,2 Jatin J. Patil,1 Evelyn N. Wang,2,*
and Jeffrey C. Grossman1,4,*

SUMMARY
Passive cooling relying on evaporation and radiation, while offering
great energy-saving opportunities, faces challenges with low
ambient cooling powers, environmental heating, high water usage,
and climate condition constraints. To overcome these shortcomings,
here, we present insulated cooling with evaporation and radiation
(ICER), which utilizes a solar-reflecting layer; an infrared-emitting
evaporative layer; and an infrared-transparent, solar-reflecting,
and vapor-permeable insulation layer. One major advantage of
ICER is that it synergistically combines thermal insulation, evapora-
tive cooling, and radiative cooling. Consequently, it consistently
achieves below-wet-bulb temperatures with much less water con-
sumption than pure evaporation while reaching 9.3
C below the
ambient temperature under direct sunlight. With unfavorable
climate conditions, ICER delivers 96 W/m2 daytime cooling power
at the ambient temperature and shows a 300% enhancement over
the state-of-the-art radiative cooler. During the summer months,
without electricity, ICER can extend food shelf life by 40% in
humid climates and 200% in dry climates with low water-refilling
frequencies.

INTRODUCTION
Cooling is the fastest-growing end use of energy in the building sector, responsible
for over 1 Gt CO2 emissions and 8.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in
2019.1 With >10% of the world’s population still lacking regular access to elec-
tricity,2 passive cooling provides an attractive pathway to addressing the global
cooling needs with little electric power and carbon footprint, not only for human
thermal comfort but also to store and distribute food and pharmaceuticals.3,4 Previ-
ous passive cooling solutions based on evaporation and radiation, while showing
significant promise, are still facing critical challenges associated with solar and envi-
ronmental heating, large water expenditure, low cooling power, and climate condi-
tion constraints.5–13 Evaporative coolers rely on the large enthalpy of vaporization to 1Department of Materials Science and
generate high cooling power, which has been used for air cooling14,15 and the stor- Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of
age of perishable goods.16 However, they consume a significant amount of water, Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
and evaporative materials can be heated to 10
C –20
C above the ambient rather 2Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
than reaching sub-ambient temperatures under the sun.5,6 On the other hand, radi- Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
ative coolers reflect sunlight while leveraging thermal radiation to transfer energy to- 3These authors contributed equally
ward the cold outer space through the mid-infrared (mid-IR) transparent window of 4Lead contact
the atmosphere.7,17–21 Nevertheless, radiative cooling typically offers <120 W/m2 *Correspondence: enwang@mit.edu (E.N.W.),
cooling power at the ambient temperature.7,17–22 In practice, high-performance jcg@mit.edu (J.C.G.)
radiative cooling (100 W/m2 cooling power or 10
C stagnation temperature https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.101068

Cell Reports Physical Science 3, 101068, October 19, 2022 ª 2022 The Author(s). 1
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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Figure 1. Insulated cooling with evaporation and radiation (ICER)

(A) ICER structure consisting of a solar reflector, a water-rich and IR-emitting evaporative layer, and a vapor-permeable, IR-transparent, and solar-
reflecting insulation layer.
(B) Optical and IR images of polyacrylamide hydrogel (PAH) and polyethylene aerogel (PEA): PAH is transparent in the visible spectrum and opaque in
the IR, while the opposite holds for PEA. The height of the MIT logo is 40 mm. Photo credit: Zhengmao Lu, MIT.
(C and D) (C) Stagnation temperature drop DT = Tamb  T sub and (D) ambient temperature cooling power q 0 predicted by our model with varying PEA
thickness. ICER (light blue lines) is compared with the state-of-the-art radiative cooling (pink lines), assuming 5-mm PAH thickness and the ambient
condition at solar noon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA on August 26, 2020.

drop) has only been demonstrated in high-altitude areas with low atmospheric den-
sity and low relative humidity (RH) or under indirect sunlight.10,18,20–25

Recently, hybrid evaporative and radiative cooling has been pursued by several
research groups.13,26–29 However, either evaporation and radiation were not syner-
gistically combined over the same area26,29 or environmental heating was not prop-
erly managed at below-ambient temperatures,13,27,28 which makes a significant
improvement over stand-alone cooling technologies challenging. Here, we present
a cooling architecture that allows for insulated cooling with evaporation and radia-
tion (ICER) and greatly outperforms previous passive cooling technologies. In
Figure 1A, from bottom to top, the ICER structure consists of a solar reflector, a
water-rich and IR-emitting evaporative layer, and a vapor-permeable, IR-trans-
parent, and solar-reflecting insulation layer. The top layer, which enables heat
removal through both evaporation and radiation while resisting environmental heat-
ing, is the key to the ICER design.

We tested the performance of ICER with unfavorable climate conditions: high RH

and low altitude.30–32 Under direct sunlight (solar radiation Qsun = 836 W/m2),
ICER reached below-wet-bulb temperatures (9.3
C lower than the ambient), which
is not possible with pure evaporation. Notably, we achieved better cooling

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performance even with much-reduced water consumption due to the optically opti-
mized insulation layer. Further, ICER delivered ambient cooling power of 96 W/m2 at
RH = 44.0% and 86 W/m2 at RH = 50.9% around solar noon. Unlike previous hybrid
cooling experiments, with ICER, we demonstrated a 300% enhancement in daytime
cooling power over a state-of-the-art radiative cooler under the same working con-
ditions. Finally, with a heat and mass transfer model validated by our experiments,
we showed great implications of ICER for food and energy savings under a wide
range of climate conditions.

RESULTS
Modeling cooling performance
To elucidate the working principle of ICER, we consider the thermal/solar radiation
and heat conduction across the cooling architecture as well as the vapor diffusion
through the insulation layer. In addition, we incorporate the heat and mass convec-
tion at the air/insulation layer interface and the reflection and emission at the
reflector surface as boundary conditions. The energy balance in the system requires

d  
qevap + qrad + qcond = 0 (Equation 1)
dx
where x is the distance from the top surface of the insulation layer, and qevap, qrad,
and qcond are the energy fluxes associated with evaporation, radiation, and conduc-
tion at location x, respectively. While qcond and qevap are governed by Fourier’s law
and Fick’s law, respectively, qrad is determined from the radiative transfer equation
(RTE) (Note S1). The RTE accounts for the radiation intensity attenuation due to ab-
sorption and out-scattering and the augmentation by emission and in-scattering as
well as solar irradiation. For a given temperature at the substrate surface Tsub, the
structure generates cooling power if there is a net energy flow from the substrate
to the ambient (qevap + qrad + qcond < 0). The net cooling power can then be calcu-
lated as
 
qcool =  qevap + qrad + qcond (Equation 2)

The stagnation temperature difference DT is defined as Tsub – Tamb when qcool =

0 and the net ambient cooling power q0 is defined as qcool at Tsub = Tamb. We detail
the modeling of the heat and mass transfer in Note S1.

While ICER is not limited to one set of materials, to showcase the cooling performance,
we have used the commercially available 3M Enhanced Specular Reflector (ESR),33
polyacrylamide hydrogel (PAH), and polyethylene aerogel (PEA)23 as the three layers
from bottom to top in Figure 1A, respectively. The images of PAH and PEA are shown
in Figure 1B: PAH is transparent in the visible spectrum and opaque in the IR, while the
opposite holds for PEA. More details on the synthesis and characterization of materials
are included in section ‘‘experimental procedures’’ and Figures S1–S6. Notably, the
3M ESR has a solar reflectance of 94.6%, our PAH has a 92% water mass fraction
when fully hydrated, our PEA has a solar reflectance of 92.2% and a mid-IR transmit-
tance of 79.9% at 6 mm thickness, and the thermal conductivity and the vapor diffu-
sivity for PEA are 28 mW/m-K and 0.18 cm2/K, respectively.

With these material properties, in Figure 1C, we plot the model prediction of the
stagnation temperature drop –DT for ICER as we change the PEA thickness while
fixing the PAH thickness at 5 mm (light blue solid line). We compare it with pure radi-
ative cooling generated by the highly IR-emitting 3M ESR film (Figure S1)23,33 with
varying PEA thickness without the PAH (pink solid line in Figure 1C). We used the

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ambient conditions at solar noon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, on

August 26, 2020: Tamb = 22.2
C, RH = 39.5%, Qsun = 836 W/m2, and the heat transfer
coefficient at the PEA/air interface hconv = 10 W/m2-K. In Figure 1C, ICER can reach
more negative DT compared with pure radiative cooling, and the increasing PEA in-
sulation thickness allows for lower stagnation temperatures. In Figure 1D, we consid-
ered the cooling power at the ambient temperature where insulation from parasitic
heating becomes irrelevant. For pure radiative cooling, the ambient cooling power
q0 varies little with increased PEA thickness since the overall IR emittance becomes
lower while the overall solar reflectance becomes higher. For ICER, as the PEA thick-
ness increases, the vapor transport resistance for evaporation becomes significantly
larger, resulting in a lower q0. Nevertheless, ICER still has a significantly larger q0
than pure radiative cooling.

Stagnation temperature test

We performed the stagnation temperature test for ICER, where the synergetic effect
between evaporative and radiative cooling was shown as below-wet-bulb tempera-
tures were demonstrated under direct sunlight with very little water consumption. In
Figure 2A, two identical experimental setups were placed next to each other on the
roof of a building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The left one had an
ICER sample consisting of the ESR-PAH-PEA material stack (Figure 2A bottom shows
the schematic for the left setup). The right one contained an evaporation-dominated
cooling sample with the ESR reflector and the PAH evaporator but without the PEA
insulator. In the case of evaporation-dominated cooling, although the exposed PAH
surface has high IR emittance, solar absorption in the evaporation layer causes the
net radiation outflux to be minimal or even negative, and the dominant cooling
mechanism is evaporation. Table S1 provides the sample geometries, and more de-
tails about the stagnation temperature test can be found in section ‘‘experimental
procedures.’’

We report the temperature of the evaporation-dominated sample (dark blue solid

line), the ICER sample (light blue solid line), and the ambient (black solid line), as
well as the wet-bulb temperature (gray solid line) recorded between 10:00 and
22:00 on August 26, 2020, in Figure 2B. The solar radiation and the wind speed dur-
ing this period can be found in Figure S7. With a solar reflector underneath the evap-
oration layer, our evaporation-dominated sample reached 6.5
C below the ambient
under direct sunlight instead of being heated to above-ambient temperatures like
typical evaporative cooling materials.5,6 The ICER sample, on the other hand,
was even 2
C–3
C colder than the evaporation-dominated sample in the daytime,
consistently staying under the wet-bulb temperature, which is impossible with
pure evaporation (DT = 9.3
C for ICER at Tamb = 22.2
C and RH = 39.5% with
Qsun = 836 W/m2). At night when Qsun = 0, the temperature difference between
evaporation-dominated cooling and ICER became minimal as there was no solar
heating. Next, we consider the water consumption as a function of time for the
two samples (Figure 2B bottom). Due to the insulation layer, evaporation is signifi-
cantly slower for ICER, which will normally cause higher sample temperatures.34
However, since PEA resists parasitic and solar heating without blocking IR emission,
ICER enables lower stagnation temperatures even with much less water consump-
tion. To compare the experimental results with model predictions, we averaged
the data for both setups during the daytime (11:30–13:00) and the nighttime
(20:00–21:00), separately, which generates four different cases (Figure 2C). Good
agreement is shown between the model and experiments for all cases in terms of
both DT and m _ 00 . Uncertainties of experimental and modeling results are discussed
in detail in Note S2.

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A C

Figure 2. Stagnation temperature test in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

(A) Top: image of experimental setups. Two identical setups were placed next to each other, where the left one contains an ICER sample with the ESR-
PAH-PEA material stack and the right one contains an evaporation-dominated sample with the ESR-PAH material stack. Photo credit: Arny Leroy, MIT.
Bottom: schematic of the cross-section of the left setup.
(B) Stagnation temperature (top) and evaporated water mass (bottom) for the evaporation-dominated sample (dark blue line) and the ICER sample (light
blue line) recorded between 10:00 and 22:00 on August 26, 2020.
(C) DT (top) and evaporation mass flux m_ 00 (bottom) averaged during the daytime (11:30–13:00) and the nighttime (20:00–21:00) (dark green) and the
corresponding modeling results (light green). Sources of errors are discussed in detail in Note S2.

Cooling power test

Next, we show that ICER enables high cooling power even under unfavorable
climate conditions. We characterized the net cooling power while varying dT =
Tsub – Tamb by embedding heaters and temperature controllers underneath the cool-
ing layers. The cooling power test procedures were previously reported by Leroy
et al.,23 who also showed the state-of-the-art radiative cooling performance for
the reference pure radiative cooler (ESR + PEA) used in the current study. We also
described the test setup in section ‘‘experimental procedures,’’ Figure S8, and
Table S2. We compared the cooling power of ICER (ESR + PAH + PEA) first against
pure radiative cooling (ESR + PEA) in Figures 3A and 3B and then with evaporation-
dominated cooling (ESR + PAH) in Figures 3C and 3D. In Figure 3A, we show signif-
icantly higher cooling power of ICER (light blue circles for experimental data and
light blue solid line for model prediction) compared with pure radiative cooling

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A B

C D

Figure 3. Cooling power test

(A–D) Model and experimental results of cooling power as a function of the temperature difference between the substrate and the ambient (dT = Tsub –
T amb) for (A) ICER (ESR + PAH + PEA) versus pure radiative cooling (ESR + PEA) daytime, (B) ICER versus pure radiative cooling nighttime, (C) ICER versus
evaporation-dominated cooling (ESR + PAH) daytime, and (D) ICER versus evaporation-dominated cooling nighttime. The weather conditions are also
provided for each set of experiments. The PAH and PEA thickness for each experiment and system are given in Table S2. The errors associated with the
temperature and cooling power measurement are discussed in Note S2.

(pink circles for experimental data and pink solid line for model prediction) around
solar noon. Specifically, around dT = 0
C, qcool = 22 W/m2 for pure radiative cooling,
while qcool = 86 W/m2 for ICER with RH = 50.9%, marking a close to 300% perfor-
mance enhancement. In Figure 3B, at night, the cooling power difference between
ICER and pure radiative cooling becomes less as evaporation was much slower with
the lower Tamb and higher RH. Note that the nonlinear behavior below dT = 3.3
C
(the dew point) in Figure 3B was caused by vapor condensation on the radiative
cooler.

In Figure 3C, around the ambient temperature with RH = 44.0%, qcool = 96 W/m2 for
ICER, which is lower than the 143 W/m2 delivered by evaporation-dominated cool-
ing (dark blue circles for experimental data and dark blue solid line for model predic-
tion). When Tsub is close to Tamb, there is minimal parasitic heat gain, and the evap-
oration-dominated sample shows higher cooling power due to the lower vapor
transport resistance. At sufficiently below-ambient temperatures, where evapora-
tion is generally slower, ICER still has higher cooling power as parasitic heating
and solar absorption are better managed. At night, since solar heating also becomes
irrelevant, the crossover point between the two cooling solutions shifts to lower
temperatures.

We note that the performance of evaporation-dominated cooling is very sensitive

to the optical properties of the substrate underneath the evaporation layer.
For example, in previous studies5,6 where the substrate solar reflectance ranged
from 0.5 to 0.65, no net cooling power can be generated at the ambient tempera-
ture by evaporation-dominated cooling. Here, we also consider a moderately

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A B

Figure 4. Application guidelines for passive cooling under various climate conditions
(A and B) (A) Stagnation temperature benefit B T and (B) ambient cooling power benefit B P of ICER (ESR + PAH + PEA) compared with radiative cooling
(ESR + PEA) under various Tamb and RH. The PAH thickness is set to 5 mm and the PEA thickness is set to 10 mm.
(C and D) (C) Stagnation temperature drop and (D) ambient temperature cooling power at different locations calculated for pure radiative cooling (pink
bar), ICER (light blue bar), and evaporation-dominated cooling (dark blue bar) assuming Q sun = 1,000 W/m 2 and h conv = 10 W/m 2 -K.

solar-reflecting white-paint-coated substrate (ColorMaster Paint + Primer White, so-

lar reflectance = 0.77; Figure S9A). In Figure S9B, we show that the ambient cooling
power of the evaporation-dominated design (white paint + PAH) was only 51 W/m2
around solar noon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 26, 2020, while ICER
(white paint + PAH + PEA) reached q0 = 95 W/m2 under the same working condition.
With the presence of the solar-reflecting insulation layer, the cooling performance is
much less sensitive to the reflectance of the materials underneath. We also consid-
ered the optical property change of PAH during the evaporation process. In Fig-
ure S10, we compare the hemispherical transmittance and reflectance of fully hydrat-
ed and half hydrated PAH, based on which we expect little cooling performance
variation of ICER while the water content of PAH decreases.

DISCUSSION
With our heat and mass transfer model validated by experiments, we can provide
application guidelines for different passive cooling technologies under a wide range
of climate conditions. As described by Equations 1 and 2 as well as Note S1, we can
model the cooling performance, accounting for conduction, convection, radiation,
and mass diffusion in the system. For any given ambient temperature and RH, we
define BT as the stagnation temperature benefit and BP as the ambient cooling po-
wer benefit of ICER (ESR + PEA + PAH) relative to radiative cooling (ESR + PEA). In
Figures 4A and 4B, we provide contour plots of BT and BP for various Tamb and RH

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A B

Figure 5. Simulated real-world benefit of ICER for all climate zones in the United States
(A) Shelf-life extension percentage of vegetables and fruits for summer months (May 1 to September 1) assuming Q10 = 2.5.
(B) Water recharging period for ICER assuming 5-mm PAH and 10-mm PEA.

assuming 5-mm thick PAH, 10-mm thick PEA, Qsun = 1,000 W/m2, hconv = 10 W/m2-K,
and a modified US Standard 1976 atmosphere that accounts for varying Tamb and RH
(see Note S3 for details). For relatively low Tamb and high RH (the top left region), the
solar absorption in the evaporation layer outweighs the insignificant evaporative
cooling effect. Consequently, BT < 0
C, and BP < 0 W/m2, which means pure radia-
tive cooling exhibits a better cooling performance. In most other scenarios, ICER
significantly outperforms pure radiative cooling, reaching both lower temperatures
and higher ambient cooling powers. We further consider the weather data for
several different locations (1–8 in Figure 4A) at noon on August 1, 2020, covering
a wide range of working conditions. The stagnation temperature drop and the water
consumption rate are evaluated for different cooling architectures accounting for
local atmospheric transmittance (Notes S3) in Figures 4C and 4D, respectively
(pink bar for pure radiative cooling, light blue bar for ICER, dark blue bar for evap-
oration-dominated cooling). Consistent with Figures 4A and 4B, –DT is considerably
larger for ICER compared with radiative cooling except for low temperature and high
RH places (Chatham and Oakland). Figures 4C and 4D also suggest that ICER can
keep the system colder while consuming much less water compared with evapora-
tion-dominated cooling.

Note that –DT has great implications for the storage of perishable foods. For
example, for off-grid farm-level storage of vegetables and fruits, we can use the
ICER structure to cover the storage unit to keep the post-harvest produce below
the ambient temperature. This can be especially useful for places without regular ac-
cess to electricity such that active cooling is not quite feasible. Labuza and Breene
showed that many common vegetables and fruits have a Q10 between 2 and 3, where
Q10 is defined as the factor by which the spoilage rate increases for every 10
C tem-
perature rise.35 Assuming Q10 = 2.5, we calculated the expected shelf-life extension
enabled by ICER in all 16 climate zones in the United States (Table S3)21 based on the
Typical Meteorological Year 3 (TMY3) hourly weather data36 between May 1 and
September 1. In Figure 5A, we show that the shelf life of vegetables and fruits cooled
by ICER can be extended by around 40% in more humid areas and >200% in drier re-
gions compared with those stored at ambient temperatures. We also estimated how
many days ICER can function before it needs to be recharged with water. Assuming
5-mm PAH and 10-mm PEA, in Figure 5B, we show that the recharging period for ICER
in most places is greater than 10 days and can surpass a month for counties on the
west coast. Even for hot and arid areas such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, one working

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cycle for ICER can last around 4 days. The recharging period of ICER can also be
increased with thicker PAH and PEA designs, which improve the water capacity
and insulation. To recharge the ICER structure, we can simply take out the hydrogel
layer and soak it in water, and potentially use a second fully hydrated hydrogel layer
to minimize downtime and allow for alternation. If we want to keep the materials in
place during the recharging process, we can design extended parts for the hydrogel
layer that can be dipped into water reservoirs. We then can use capillary pumping to
route water into the dried hydrogel, leveraging its porous structure. The concept of
this capillary-driven recharging is described in Figure S11, while the detailed design
requires further research. We do not expect any significant performance change of
ICER after recharging as the evaporation and optical properties of PAH do not vary
much after being fully dried and then refilled with water, which is also supported
by previous hydrogel-based cooling studies.6,13 We note that our simulation done
for the United States across a wide range of climate zones can also guide the imple-
mentation of ICER for food shelf-life extension in developing countries.

On the other hand, cooling power is directly related to potential energy savings for
buildings. In Figure S12, we compare the ambient cooling power of ICER and pure
radiative cooling at different locations representing all climate zones in the United
States, where ICER also shows a significant advantage in most cases. Previously,
Goldstein et al. used pure radiative cooling to generate cold fluid, which can cut
the electricity consumption for low-rise office buildings by lowering the condenser
temperature in air conditioning (AC) systems.9 With much higher q0, ICER will enable
significantly more energy savings when integrated into AC in a similar manner (Fig-
ure S13). However, we would also like to point out that, for commercial and residen-
tial buildings with moderate or high thermal loads,37 condenser cooling generally
needs to be done at above-ambient temperatures, where evaporation-dominated
cooling delivers higher cooling power (although with much more water consump-
tion). In the future, comprehensive techno-economic analyses will be needed to eval-
uate the real-world benefit of roof-top passive cooling solutions in buildings and how
they are compared with alternative technologies such as solar panels occupying the
same roof area. We note that our current cooling design is not limited to one partic-
ular material set, although we have used ESR, PAH, and PEA in our demonstration.
PAH, or hydrogel in general, is a very scalable material.38 The ESR film, which is an
off-the-shelf product, can be substituted with cheaper lower-performance alterna-
tives such as white paint as long as we include the top solar-reflecting layer, which
in our case is the PEA (Figure S9). The manufacture of PEA currently relies on critical
point drying, which is still a costly process and needs further optimization for scalabil-
ity. However, the PEA layer can be replaced by air gaps formed with porous polyeth-
ylene membranes, which have been used in previous radiative cooling studies17,19,22
and should facilitate the mass production of our proposed ICER cooling architecture.

Overall, we have showcased our evaporative, radiative, and insulating cooling archi-
tecture with a scalable material set. Unlike previous evaporative cooling materials,
which are often heated to above-ambient temperatures by the sun, our ICER struc-
ture reached significantly below-ambient (and even below-wet-bulb) temperature
under direct sunlight while consuming much less water than evaporation-dominated
cooling. We demonstrated 300% ambient cooling power enhancement over pure
radiative cooling with the same working conditions. Using our cooling design,
high-performance cooling can be achieved under a broad range of climate condi-
tions, which offers opportunities for wider adoption of passive cooling. Our ICER
structure can significantly reduce the active cooling needs for perishable goods
and buildings, thus greatly affecting the sustainability of human civilization.

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EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES
Resource availability
Lead contact
Requests for additional information, and for resources and materials should be
directed to and will be fulfilled by, the lead contact, Jeffrey C. Grossman (jcg@
mit.edu).

Materials availability
This study did not generate new unique materials.

Data and code availability

All data from this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reason-
able request.

PAH synthesis
We mixed 4.3 g of acrylamide (A8887, Sigma-Aldrich) and 20 mL of deionized (DI)
water to form the monomer solution for PAH synthesis. Then 320 mL of 0.4 wt % so-
lution of N,N0 -methylenebisacrylamide (146072, Sigma-Aldrich) in DI water was used
as the crosslinker, 320 mL of a 5 wt % solution of ammonium persulfate (A3678,
Sigma-Aldrich) was used as the reaction initiator, and 40 mL of N,N,N0 ,N0 -tetrame-
thylethylenediamine (T9281, Sigma-Aldrich) was used as the reaction accelerator.
We added the crosslinker solution, the initiator solution, and the accelerator solution
to the monomer solution and quickly put the mixture into a mold. We placed the
mold in a UV oven (Spectrolinker UV Crosslinker, Spectronics) for an hour to obtain
PAH, which was then put into excess DI water to reach the fully hydrated state.

PEA synthesis
We first mixed 0.5 wt % ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene (429015, Sigma-
Aldrich) with 99.3 wt % paraffin oil (76235, Sigma-Aldrich) and 0.2 wt % butylated hy-
droxytoluene (W218405, Sigma-Aldrich) in a sealed beaker at room temperature.
We then heated the heterogeneous solution in a silicone oil bath at 160
C and
stirred it with a magnetic bar for around 30 min, at which point the polymer fully dis-
solved into the paraffin oil to create a homogeneous solution. The solution was then
poured into an aluminum mold, which was subsequently submerged in cold water
(4
C). After phase separation of the polymer from the solvent, the gel was trans-
ferred to a hexane bath for solvent exchange. Three solvent exchanges in hexane fol-
lowed by three solvent exchanges in ethanol were done over the course of 2 weeks
to remove all paraffin oil from the polymer gel before drying. Finally, the polymer gel
was dried in a supercritical CO2 dryer.

Material characterization
The optical properties of the PAH, PEA, and 3M ESR were characterized in the ultra-
violet, visible, and near/mid-infrared using an UV-visible near-infrared (UV-VIS-NIR)
spectrophotometer (Cary 4000, Agilent) and a Fourier transform infrared spectrom-
eter (Nicolet 6700, Thermo Scientific). Direct-hemispherical transmittance and
reflectance measurements were done using an Internal DRA-2500, Agilent inte-
grating sphere in the UV-VIS-NIR, while a Mid-IR IntegratIR, Pike Technologies inte-
grating sphere was used in the mid-IR. The optical properties of the 3M ESR film,
PAH, and PEA are shown in Figures S1, S2, and S3, respectively. The scanning elec-
tron microscope image of PEA, water contact angles on PEA, and water mass frac-
tion of PAH are included in Figures S4–S6. The effective thermal conductivity of
PEA was measured to be kPEA = 28 G 5 mW/m-K following the guarded-hot-plate
method ASTM C1044-16 and the effective vapor diffusivity in PEA was determined

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as DPEA = 0.18 G 0.02 cm2/s at 24
C using the wet cup method following ASTM E96
(for reference, at standard temperature and pressure, the thermal conductivity of
static air is 26 mW/m-K and the vapor diffusivity in air is 0.28 cm2/s).

Stagnation temperature test procedure

To simulate 1D heat and mass transfer in our experiments, the samples were insu-
lated using a 5-cm thick vacuum insulation panel (VIP) (THRESHOLD, Thermal Vision)
with 2.88 mW/m-K thermal conductivity on the bottom as well as a 10-mm thick aero-
gel insulation blanket (08–052gel, HiwowSport) with 12–18 mW/m-K thermal con-
ductivity surrounding the perimeter. The aerogel blanket was covered by an
aluminum sheet to reduce the solar heating of the setup. Between the PAH and
the vacuum insulation is a 3M ESR film, which serves as a reflector. A T-type thermo-
couple was embedded between the VIP and the reflector to measure the tempera-
ture with a data acquisition card (NI-9212, National Instruments) and a mass balance
was used to record the mass change. Two identical setups with different cooling
structures were placed on the roof of an MIT building in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
United States, where the experiments started in the morning and ended at night. The
weather conditions, including the ambient temperature, dew point, solar radiation,
and wind speed, were recorded by a weather station (HOBO U30 Station)
(Figure S14).

Cooling power test procedure

We measured the cooling power of the different system configurations using a
custom-built guarded emitter setup. The setup was reported previously23 and is pre-
sented in Figure S8 and briefly described here as well. Two identical devices were
built to allow for simultaneous comparison of different cooling systems. Each device
has a 10-cm diameter emitter facing the sky and a heater at its back side to control its
temperature and measure cooling power. The emitter and heater are split into two
parts, a main emitter/heater and a guard emitter/heater, similar to the guard hot
plate thermal conductivity setup that allows for accurate 1D heat flux measurement.
The main emitter/heater, located in the center of the setup and measuring 5 cm in
diameter, is used to measure 1D heat flux at the emitter surface at a range of tem-
peratures. The 10 cm outer diameter guard emitter/heater, surrounding the main
emitter/heater with a 0.5-mm separation gap and controlled to be at the same tem-
perature as the main emitter/heater, shields the latter from 2D heat transfer by pre-
venting lateral heat and mass transfer. T-type thermocouples, connected to a DAQ
module (USB-TC, Measurement Computing), were inserted between the emitters
and heaters to measure their temperature over time. The main heater was connected
in a four-wire configuration to a power supply (2425, Keithley and 2440, Keithley),
while the guard heater was connected in a two-wire configuration to another power
supply (2230-30-1, Keithley). The main and guard emitter temperatures were
controlled using a PID control at the heaters. The whole emitter/heater assembly
was inserted inside an insulated box (30 by 30 by 15 cm) made of stacked sheets
of polystyrene foam (FOAMULAR 150). The outside of the box was with Tefzel-
coated polished aluminum sheets to minimize parasitic solar heating, while the in-
side was covered with polished aluminum sheets only. Inside the box, the emitter/
heater assembly rested on top of an additional 5 cm of polyisocyanurate (PolyIso)
thermal insulation (k = 0.023 W/m-K).

During the experiments, the temperature of the emitters was increased in steps of
approximately 1.25
C from their stagnation temperature to a few degrees above
the ambient temperature. The main heater power and main emitter temperature
were averaged over 2 min at each temperature step after stabilization of the emitter

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temperature. We note that, near the stagnation temperature, the guard emitter tem-
perature was higher than the main emitter temperature, leading to undesirable 2D
heat and mass transfer at the main emitter. As such, we did not show the stagnation
temperature data points (dT at qcool = 0 W/m2) in Figure 3A of the manuscript to only
include 1D heat and mass transfer measurements. Similar to the stagnation temper-
ature experiment, the weather conditions, including the ambient temperature, dew
point, solar radiation, and wind speed, were recorded by a weather station (HOBO
U30 Station) (Figure S14).

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
Supplemental information can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.
2022.101068.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Dr. Leon Glicksman and Dr. Shaoting Lin for the helpful discus-
sion. This work is supported by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems
Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Z.L. and A.L. conceived the concept of this work, synthesized the materials, and de-
signed and performed the cooling test. Z.L., A.L., and J.J.P. characterized the mate-
rials. Z.L., A.L., and L.Z. developed the heat and mass transfer model. Z.L. and A.L.
drafted the paper with input from all authors. E.N.W. and J.C.G. supervised and
guided the project.

DECLARATION OF INTERESTS
A provisional patent has been filed based on this work (U.S. Serial No. 63/272,035).

Received: April 20, 2022

Revised: August 10, 2022
Accepted: September 1, 2022
Published: September 20, 2022

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