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Plastic clothing material developed to keep people cool
Researchers at US Stanford University have engineered a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.
​San Francisco: Researchers at US Stanford University have engineered a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.
In addition to letting perspiration evaporate through the material, something ordinary fabrics already do, the new textile cools human body by providing a revolutionary cooling mechanism: allowing heat that the body emits as infrared radiation to pass through the plastic textile, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
Wearers of the textile, known as nanoporous polyethylene (nanoPE), show skin temperature about 4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.2 degrees Celsius, lower than when they are covered with cotton. "If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy," said Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and one of the authors of a paper in the September 2 issue of the journal Science.
The work is based on understanding that all objects, including our bodies, throw off heat in the form of infrared radiation, an invisible and benign wavelength of light. Blankets warm us by trapping infrared heat emissions close to the body.
"Forty to 60 per cent of our body heat is dissipated as infrared radiation when we are sitting in an office," explained Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering who specialises in photonics, which is the study of visible and invisible light. "But until now there has been little or no research on designing the thermal radiation characteristics of textiles."
The researchers blended nanotechnology, photonics and chemistry to give polyethylene, namely the clear, clingy plastic we use as kitchen wrap, a number of characteristics desirable in clothing material: it allows thermal radiation, air and water vapor to pass right through, and it is opaque to visible light.
