A radiative vapor condenser sheds heat in the form of infrared radiation and cools itself to below the ambient air temperature to produce liquid water from vapor. This effect has been known for centuries, and is exploited by some insects to survive in dry deserts. Humans have also been using radiative condensation for dew collection. However, all existing radiative vapor condensers must operate during the nighttime. Here, we develop daytime radiative condensers that continue to operate 24 h a day. These daytime radiative condensers can produce water from vapor under direct sunlight, without active consumption of energy. Combined with traditional passive cooling via convection and conduction, radiative cooling can substantially increase the performance of passive vapor condensation, which can be used for passive water extraction and purification technologies.Energy and clean water are global challenges that are intertwined in an unfavorable way: even in areas where water is abundant, energy may not be available to purify it for human use (
1,
2). There has been strong interest in developing passive technologies to purify or harvest water without using fuel or electricity. In this context, passive vapor condensation becomes particularly important because many passive water technologies go through the vapor phase of water in their harvesting or purification processes.Traditional vapor condensation technique is based on convective and conductive heat exchange with ambient environments. This technique is widely used in systems with hot vapors (
3–
6). However, with ever-increasing emphasis on passive systems, there are many situations in which warm- or even room-temperature vapor needs to be effectively condensed, such as extracting water from atmosphere (
7–
9) and warm vapor generated from high-efficiency solar evaporation (
10). For vapor at such temperatures, most traditional condensers fail. For this reason, there is a clear need for a condensation technique to complement traditional condensers.A different technique is based on radiative vapor condensation. Darkling beetles in the Namib desert (
11) use this technique to collect water. Their bodies function as a cooling surface by shedding thermal energy through midinfrared (mid-IR) radiation toward a clear nighttime sky, generating dew from humid air. This mechanism is also used by commercial radiative dew condensers (
7–
9). However, neither Namib beetle nor existing dew condensers can operate in the daytime (
7). Those nighttime radiative condensers are incompatible with many emerging water technologies that require 24 h operation or direct access to sunlight.Recently, Fan et al. showed that passive radiative cooling to subambient temperatures can be realized even during the daytime, by integrating a high-efficiency solar reflector with a high-emissivity thermal emitter in the mid-IR atmospheric transparency window (
12). Using this work as a basis, here we demonstrate a daytime radiative condenser. Compared to existing radiative vapor condensers (
7–
9), our condenser can function even in the presence of sunlight, which is essential for integration into passive water-harvesting systems that mainly operate during daytime.
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