This is through the nanopores found in it. People may need to discard their summer clothes and buy clothes made from this fabric in the future.
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One problem is that this means that fabrics can’t cool someone until they actually start sweating.
This new material result of the marriage of nanotechnology, optics and chemistry, allows the heat discharging body.
The material was treated with an additional chemical to allow it to whisk water away for an additional cooling effect and was punctured to increase air flow.
In recent years, new synthetic materials have been created to wick away moisture even more effectively than natural fibers such as cotton. The fabric is made from impermeable plastic, which lets the body release heat, making the person feeling cooler by about 4.25 degrees Fahrenheit.
A new material described in Science takes that a step further.
Now cotton only allows 1.5 per cent of infra-red waves to pass through but the new material lets 96 per cent of waves out, making the wearer feel almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than if they wore normal cotton clothing. That’s why you get so toasty when you bundle up under a blanket – you’re trapping the heat your skin emits in a place where it can continue to warm you.
“If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy”, says Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. No fabric on the market is totally permeable to this radiation.
The clothes can make you feel cooler than wearing nothing at all.
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] By scattering specific wavelengths of light in the same fashion that makes the sky appear blue, this new plastic clothing material uses the same principles that allow the Saharan silver ant to stay cool in the sweltering heat of a desert afternoon to keep the skin comfortable as well. “But cooling is much harder”, he said.
This new fabric is a nanoporous type of polyethylene. They have modified the clingy, clear plastic used in kitchen wrap to create fabric that cools the skin. That means it’s not see-through but can still let infrared radiation through easily.
Sandwiching a layer of cotton mesh between two sheets of the adapted polyethylene, to boost both strength and thickness, the team tested their invention.
Testing a three-ply construct of their plastic textile, they compared it with cotton fabric of similar thickness to see how much heat was dissipated from a surface under each material.
In their study published on Science Mag, it was revealed that the reason for this impressive property of polyethylene is because it allows infrared radiation to pass through it easily. She points out that setting a building’s or home’s thermostat just a few degrees higher can cut energy use by up to 45%.
Researchers are looking to make it more low-cost to produce. Cui’s first step is to make a woven version of the fabric. NanoPE is flat, which can feel odd.
“When you touch it, it’s soft, it’s flexible, and it nearly feels like a regular fabric.
A regular textile is not flat”, Cui said. The team’s next step is to create a woven version of the material, which now feels odd against the skin.
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That doesn’t sound like a big figure, but it is significant, and with a little luck and a lot of hard work, the researchers believe their material may finally be ready for showtime. “We thought, why not cool the bodies instead?”
