Biomimetic fabrication and infrared properties of hierarchically structured ZnO derived from cotton fibers

摘要

Materials with infrared low emissivity have attracted great attention due to their increasingly important application in both military stealthy and thermal control. Hence, this work describes a facile, green method based on cotton fibers to fabricate hierarchically structured ZnO fibers and nanorod by simply immersion and calcination process. And infrared emissivity value of samples was also investigated. The cotton fiber adsorbed Zn~(2+) could be converted into ZnO nanorod by controlling reaction temperature and solution pH. The XRD pattern revealed the highly crystalline nature of the samples. In order to enhance the surface optical properties, the surfaces of biomorphic ZnO were modified by bovine serum albumin (BSA). The low infrared emissivity values were obtained in BSA modified samples, indicating that the surface properties of materials may play an important role in infrared emissivity control.