Congratulations on the Lab's New Paper Published in Joule !

Congratulations on the Lab's New Paper Published in Joule !

Radiative cooling, a passive cooling technology dissipating heat to outer space, offers a promising solution to the energy crisis. However, conventional reciprocal emitters are constrained by Kirchhoff’s law, where equal absorption and emission limit cooling efficiency. While nonreciprocal thermal photonics offers potential, the second law of thermodynamics suggests limited improvement for horizontal surfaces.

Instead, researchers focused on urban vertical surfaces, discovering that nonreciprocity significantly enhances cooling efficiency in a “sky-vertical surface-ground” system. Nonreciprocal vertical surfaces match the net cooling performance of ideal asymmetric designs while suppressing parasitic ground heat gain. Using sawtooth gratings and Weyl semimetal multilayers, the team developed practical emitters and validated their performance. This paper, entitled “Nonreciprocal radiative cooling of vertical surface and adjacent ground”, is published in Joule. Congratulations to Wei Li, Tianji Liu, Yue Ma, Hao Pan, Fei Xie, Longnan Li, and all co-authors!

Paper link：https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb8872