Femtosecond laser-textured superhydrophilic coral-like structures spread AgNWs enable strong thermal camouflage and anti-counterfeiting

Tingni Wu, Kai Yin, Jiaqing Pei, Yuchun He, Ji An Duan, Christopher J. Arnusch

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

61 Scopus citations

Abstract

Modulating the thermal emission of a material in the infrared (IR) range can be essential for various practical applications such as smart textiles, camouflage, and anti-counterfeiting. Although many different materials or structures have been proposed, the complex manufacturing processes are still hindering their widespread use. Herein, a facile femtosecond laser processing technology and a drop-coating method are introduced to form a patternable low emissivity film. Laser-treated polyimide films resulted in superhydrophilic structured surfaces that are uniformly coated with silver-nanowires (AgNWs) in aqueous solutions for low emissivity surfaces. Furthermore, the emissivity of the samples is as low as ∼0.2 without deterioration over 800 bending-releasing cycles. The as-prepared films also display good thermal camouflage properties, namely, the films reduced the thermal radiation temperature of an object by 35.8 °C when the object temperature was ∼69.1 °C. Additionally, this IR camouflage effect of the AgNWs coated samples shows excellent stability even in harsh environments such as immersion in water, acid, alkali, and salt solution and applied voltage. We also show that information encryption was possible by adjusting the amount of AgNWs. The design of this programmable patterned low emissivity film indicates an idea for the thermal camouflage and anti-counterfeiting technology, which can carry more abundant application scenario and disguise them more complex and sophisticated.

Original languageEnglish
Article number161602
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume124
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Apr 2024

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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