Scientists Develop Thermal Camouflage That Can Dupe Infrared Cameras (cosmosmagazine.com)

Writing in the journal Nano Letters, scientists from Turkey, the U.S. and U.K. describe a material that acts as thermal camouflage. Cosmos reports: Coskun Kocabas and colleagues created a film comprising multiple ultra-thin layers of graphene and a bottom layer of gold, with non-volatile ionic liquid in between them. When a small current is applied, the ions move up into the graphene layer, cutting down the infrared radiation the surface would normally emit. Because it's thin, light and flexible the film can be applied to any number of surfaces, including clothing. Tests have successfully camouflaged a hand owned by a subject wearing a covering of the material, and others have shown it to be indistinguishable from its surroundings in a variety of ambient temperatures.

Comments

Thick clothes

[DrYak]

You radiate IR for some very good reason.

Yup, you're losing thermal energy.

For years, "thermal camo" has basically boiled down to "a layer of very well insulating clothes" (and face paint, and gloves).

The thing is, in a very hot climate, wearing insulating clothes will make you feel hot.
You would need to undress a bit, which might not be practical in every situation.

If you are wearing a suit of this stuff I imagine you won't be wearing it a long time.

The whole point of this tech is that it's switchable between isolating and radiating mode.
At a single button you can basically transform it from a wool sweater to sport T-shirt and back, without need to remove any layer of clothes (unlike classical thermo camo).
You only turn it on where thermal camouflaging is necessary, instead of wearing an isolating layer for the whole time.