Advances in personalised wearable heating and cooling technologies

Maintaining thermal comfort is vital for human health, productivity and overall well-being. Conventional heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, while effective, are energy-intensive and poorly tailored to individual physiology. Wearable personalized heating and cooling technologies offer a complementary route by providing targeted, skin-level thermal regulation that can reduce the load on ambient HVAC and enable local comfort control. This review presents a mechanistic and quantitative overview of wearable thermal management (WTM) technologies, organized into active, passive and hybrid systems. Representative active devices based on Joule heating and thermoelectric (TE) modules deliver local skin cooling of approximately 5–11 ℃ (and up to ~16 ℃ in clinical fever scenarios) and heating increases of 10–40 ℃ above ambient temperature, typically at sub-watt to few-watt power levels. Passive approaches employing bio-based phase change materials (PCMs, latent heat on the order of 100–200 J·g⁻¹), insulative aerogels and radiative cooling (RC) textiles achieve 3–10 ℃ cooling relative to conventional fabrics without external power. Hybrid strategies combine these elements to extend comfort duration and broaden the operating envelope while moderating energy consumption. Furthermore, this review highlights advances in smart materials for WTM, including bio-based and encapsulated PCMs, positive temperature coefficient (PTC) composites for self-regulating heating, high-conductivity graphene and MXene-based films, flexible TE modules and bio-inspired textiles. A particular emphasis is placed on emerging intelligent control paradigms, where physiological sensing, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven comfort models and neuromorphic thermal circuits enable predictive, low-power and user-specific regulation. Applications span medical thermotherapy and fever management, protection in extreme occupational environments, athletic performance and recovery, immersive virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) and everyday comfort. Finally, the review outlines key commercialization pathways and current challenges, including textile-compatible manufacturing (weaving, coating and printing), requirements for breathability, washability and long-term durability, and the need for standardized testing and regulatory frameworks. These perspectives define concrete milestones for translating laboratory prototypes into safe, sustainable and scalable WTM products.