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Passive radiative cooling coatings are commonly designed for high reflectance under undamaged conditions, whereas protective surfaces must retain their optical function during impact. Reconciling mechanical and optical properties in a single material has been a challenge. The glass sponge ( Euplectella sp .) maintains damage tolerance with desirable optical properties by laminated nanocomposite designs. Inspiring from this hierarchical structure, a rapidly photocurable polyurethane acrylate/Glass (PUA/Glass) multilayer composite coating is developed to confine impact damage while preserving radiative cooling performance. Alternating compliant PUA interlayers deflect and arrest cracks, whereas hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) and TiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles in glass layers redistribute load across multiple scales. HGM crushing, shell fragmentation, and local particle‐matrix debonding dissipate energy yet retain or reconstruct air/glass/polymer interfaces; by contrast, connected macroscopic cracks disrupt the reflective layer. The coating combines solar reflectance above 92% with atmospheric‐window emittance above 95% and remains, on average, 10.42°C below ambient during daytime outdoor testing. After a 20 J impact, localized hierarchical pores preserve reflectance and local cooling, while repeated 1 J impacts reveal a transition from optically tolerable microscale damage to reflectance‐degrading macrocracks. These results provide a route toward impact‐tolerant radiative‐cooling surfaces for protective components.
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Wen et al. (2026) studied this question.
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