Science: Stanford University develops textiles that cool down and put on cool

Release date: 2016-09-06


A new study was published in the latest issue of Science: Engineers at Stanford University developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile. If they are woven into clothes, they can effectively cool the body, and the effect is much better than the clothes we wear today through natural or synthetic fabrics.

Researchers believe that this new textile may be used as a ready-to-wear fabric that allows people to stay cool even in the hot summer without air conditioning.

Yi Cui, an assistant professor at the School of Materials Science and Light Science Engineering at Stanford University, said that if the body can be cooled directly, rather than working or living, it will save energy.

This new material works by allowing the body to expel heat in two ways, making the wearer feel 4 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the cotton clothes they wear.

In general, the material is cooled by evaporation of sweat, and some common fabrics can already be done. But Stanford University provided a second revolutionary cooling mechanism: let the heat in the body act as infrared radiation from the body and dissipate heat through new textiles.

It is well known that all objects, including our bodies, dissipate heat in the form of infrared radiation (an invisible and benign light); coverings such as blankets keep the body warm by capturing the infrared radiation emitted by the body. This heat radiation that escapes from the body can be snooped through the night vision goggles in the dark.

Shanhui Fan is a professor of electrical engineering in photonics, focusing on visible and invisible light. He said that when we were sitting in the office, 40% to 60% of the body's heat was expelled by infrared radiation. So far, no research has been done to cool the fabric by designing the thermal radiation characteristics of the textile.

Super kitchen packaging

In order to develop textiles with cooling properties, researchers at Stanford University have combined nanotechnology, photonics and chemical technology on a polyethylene material, which is a fresh, tight we can use on kitchen packaging. Sticker plastic.

Polyethylene has some properties of clothing materials, such as allowing heat radiation, air and water vapor to pass through, is opaque to visible light, but it is impervious to water, so researchers at Stanford University need to address its flaws.

Postdoctoral scholar and team member Po Chun Hsu said they found a variant of the polyethylene commonly used in batteries, which has a specific nanostructure that is opaque to visible light, but transparent to infrared radiation can allow the body's heat to escape. Then they transformed the variant into a chemical modified polyethylene by industrial modification, allowing water vapor molecules to evaporate through the plastic nanopores, allowing the plastic to breathe like natural fibers.

make clothes

This success allowed the researchers to find a single material that would meet their three basic criteria for making a cooling fabric. In order to make this thin material more textile, the researchers created a three-layer structure: the two treated polyethylenes were separated by a cotton web of suitable strength and thickness.

To test whether the three-layer structure has more cooling potential than cotton, they placed each piece of the material on the bare skin and tested its temperature.
Professor Shanhui Fan said that wearing any fabric more or less makes the skin warmer. If heat radiation is our only concern, then it is best not to wear anything. However, the comparison shows that wearing a traditional cotton fabric will make the surface temperature of the skin 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than wearing the new product. This difference means that a person wearing their new material may not need to open a fan or air conditioner.

In addition, the researchers said that mass-produced materials that have been adapted to the battery industry now make it easier to create products, but they are working further, including adding more color, texture, and fabric.

Professor Yi Cui said that if you want to make a textile, you must open up new ways for this research to meet the cheap demand of raw materials. This study eliminates infrared radiation by adjusting the material without the use of external energy. After a few years, many people will look back and think that this is very simple. In fact, few people have been exploring the radiation characteristics of textiles.

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Source: Bio-Exploration

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