Double-side Super-hydrophilic/ Superspreading Fabric for Ultrafast Asymmetric Sweat Transport and in-situ Power Generation

Prof. Jintu Fan, Director of the Research Centre of Textiles for Future Fashion (RCTFF), Dr Hanchao Zhang and Dr Zhanxiao Kang, Members of RCTFF, collaborated with other researchers and published an article entitled “Double-side Super-hydrophilic/ Superspreading Fabric for Ultrafast Asymmetric Sweat Transport and in-situ Power Generation” in Nano Energy.

ABSTRACT

Asymmetric (viz. Janus or one-way transport) fabrics that can promote directional sweat transport from the next-to-the-skin surface to the outer surface by the hydrophobic-hydrophilic difference across the fabric thickness have been developed. However, the hydrophobic next-to-the-skin surface inevitably increases the inherent resistance to sweat transportation into the fabric, fundamentally hampering its moisture management property. In this work, by selectively coating a poly-pyrrole (ppy) film with Turing patterns on one side of the fabric to achieve superspreading property, we demonstrated an all-hydrophilic asymmetric fabric with outstanding one-way liquid sweat transport property. Benefiting from the low resistance of sweat absorption, the all-hydrophilic fabric exhibited a dramatically increased directional sweat transport rate of 13.6 mm/s, which is 5.9 times that of the untreated fabric, and significantly enhanced sweat evaporation rate (1.56 times of the untreated fabric) and cooling performance. Furthermore, the conductive ppy-fabric, during the process of ultra-fast sweat transport, generated a potential of 150 mV over an area of 2×2 cm² or scalable electrical energy output of 2.5 mW/m² under continuous sweat transportation. The finding in this work not only provided new insight into the design and development of asymmetric fabric for ultrafast sweat transport but also proposed a novel method for the in-situ energy harvesting during the sweat transportation process, which has potential applications in self-powered smart wearables and functional clothing.

Read the full article in Nano Energy. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2024.109919