Solar Heat Shielding Using Micro-hair from Saharan Silver Ant

Outdoor solar shielding is often expensive and inefficient. A bionic textile finishing is developed that will turn polyester fabrics into solar heat reflecting textiles for sustainable green buildings. It solves to the main drawback of current architextile products, i.e. the limited protective ability against solar heat during the hot summer. This finishing technology simulates the micro-hair structure of Saharan silver ant (SSAnt) by coating the fabricated ZnO microrods in aligned array on the PET fabric. These microrods on PET fabric can effectively reflect the solar heat. The finished fabric can shield the solar heat and reduce temperature of the area under the treated fabric.

This technology can improve solar heat shielding ability of fabric roofs, allowing them to be applied as low-cost cool roof. Thus, the increase of thermal comfort architextile construction, resulting in the reductions of use of air conditioners, power consumption and urban heat island effect.