With summer comes unbearable heat in many parts of the world. And unbearable heat usually results in those embarassing sweat stains under your armpits. Those stains may now be a thing of the past, thanks to a new fabric that has been specifically designed to drain sweat from your body.
Created by bioengineers at the University of California, this new fabric is similar to human skin, in that it forms sweat into droplets that automatically drain away. This discovery is brought to us by an area of research in the Micro-Nano Innovations Lab at the university in a field called microfluidics. This field focuses on making “lab on chip” devices that manipulate fluids by using small channels.
UC graduate students Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang developed a new microfluidic textile by using water-attracting threads that were stitched into an existing highly water-repellant fabric. By doing this, they created patterns in the threads that sucked droplets of water from one side of the fabric, transported the droplets along the threads, and then expelled them on the other side. In that way, the water-repellant properties of the original fabric helps the water-attracting threads drive water down the channels. The rest of the fabric stays completely dry and breathable. The researchers could even control where the water is collected and where it drains away on the outside.
Unlike most lab-based discoveries, the researchers say "we intentionally did not use any fancy microfabrication techniques so it is compatible with the textile manufacturing process and very easy to scale up." We're excited about this: clothing that removes sweat and still lets the skin breathe would be a great enhancement over cotton, which can wick away sweat, but still allows clothing to get soaked.
Via UC Davis
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