Temperature response intelligent infrared stealth fabric based on the combined action of low infrared emissivity and heat isolation

With the development of infrared detection technology, to protect the exposure targets are more difficult than before. And traditional camouflage protection technologies have mainly focused on infrared stealth materials in fixed conditions by the adjustment of surface infrared emissivity or thermal insulation. However, with the increasing temperature of from engine, the risk of exposure possibility will greatly rise due to the change of emissivity and thermal insulation effect in reality. Hence, the development of intelligent infrared stealth materials that can respond to the temperature is an important tool for solving these problems. Here, we designed an infrared stealth fabric with macroscopic temperature-indicating adjustable emissivity, in which polyester fabric (PET) was used as the substrate, which was firstly modified with dopamine，3-thiolpropyltrimethoxysilane (KH-590) and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAAM)，by clicking on chemistry to obtain the temperature-responsive effect of the fabric material, and coated with vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) powders in waterborne polyurethane (WPU). Importantly, the emissivity of the VO 2 coating layer will decrease with the increase of temperature from 0.95 to 0.68. Meantime, the fabric will shrink with the rising temperature, successfully forming a heat-insulating air layer between the composites and the target, thus further enhancing the IR stealth performance with the air layer thermal insulation. As we expected, when heated to 50 ℃, the surface temperature of the resulting fabric remains about 30 ℃. Therefore, this research on temperature response intelligent fabric based on the combined action of low infrared emissivity and heat isolation offers novel insights for high infrared stealth materials’ fabrication.