Smart coating textiles for visible and infrared camouflage with photochromism and tunable emissivity

The development of sophisticated multispectral detectors leads to the failure of camouflage technology limited to a specific spectrum, which pushes the exploration of multispectral camouflage materials. However, one of the great challenges in multispectral camouflage is to attain compatibility. This work reports the smart coating textile with tunable infrared radiation characteristics and the capability of stimuli-responsive isomerization, for visible and infrared camouflage. The molecular interactions and synergistic effects of designed polyurethane and chromogen within the composite coating, pave the way for the compatibility of infrared and visible dual camouflage. We demonstrate that the smart coating textile has a controllable infrared emissivity ranging from 0.77 to 0.94. Moreover, the coating textile exhibits adaptively color-changing behavior in response to environmental changes. These coating textiles are characterized by low cost, good durability, stable performance, as well as infrared and visible compatible camouflage. We expect this work may inspire and promote the development of multispectral compatible camouflage materials.