Prof. Jintu Fan (left) and Dr Dahua Shou (right)
Recently, a highly acclaimed research paper titled 'Skin-like' fabric for personal moisture management has been featured in the Hong Kong Economic Times, Sing Tao Daily and Ming Pao newspapers. This paper is co-authored by Prof. Jintu Fan, Head of ITC, and Dr Dahua Shou, Assistant Professor of ITC, and published in the Science Advances journal.
The research work discusses a “skin-like” directional liquid transport fabric, which enables one-way liquid flow through spatially distributed channels that act like “sweat glands” yet repel external liquid contaminants. The water transmission rate can be 15 times greater than that of the best commercial breathable fabrics. This exceptional property is achieved by creating gradient wettability channels across a predominantly superhydrophobic substrate. The flow directionality is explained by the Gibbs pinning criterion. The permeability, mechanical property, and abrasion resistance (up to 10,000 cycles) of the fabric are not affected by the treatment. In addition to functional clothing, this concept can be extended to develop materials for oil-water separation, wound dressings, geotechnical engineering and flexible microfluidics applications, and fuel cell membranes.
L. Lao, D. Shou, Y. S. Wu and J. T. Fan. “Skin-like” fabric for personal moisture management. Science Advances 03 Apr 2020, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz0013
