Microfluidic-Assisted Blow-Spinning Strategy for Fabricating Nanofiber Aerogels toward High-Efficiency Thermal...

The traditional methods of preparing aerogels exhibit some shortcomings, such as uncontrollable pore morphology, complex process, and poor mechanical properties, which greatly limit the application of aerogels in personal thermal management (PTM). Herein, we propose a microfluidic-blow-spinning strategy that leverages the confinement effect of microchannels to enhance the mixing efficiency of different components, thereby enabling efficient homogenization of multiple components in the microfluidic field. Meanwhile, due to the continuous flow characteristics inherent to microfluidic systems, dynamic regulation of fiber microstructure composition during the spinning process can be achieved. The as-prepared fiber aerogels exhibit an ultralow density of 8.6 mg/cm³, can withstand tensile stress up to 5000 times their own weight, and retain nearly negligible plastic deformation even after 1000 compression cycles. More importantly, these fiber aerogels possess multimodal cooling functionalities through polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-mediated evaporative cooling and silica (SiO₂)-endowed excellent infrared emissivity, achieving a temperature reduction of 6.5 °C under natural sunlight, thereby outperforming commercial down products. Ascribed to the above facile and scalable preparation process, these fiber aerogels demonstrate broad application prospects in personal thermal management under extreme environmental conditions.