Scientists created a new kind of fabric, which uses light to spontaneously clean themselves of stains and grime.
The new work on self-cleaning textiles at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, paves the way towards nano-enhanced textiles, that can degrade the organic matter, simply by being put under a light bulb or worn out in the sun.
Above: Cotton textile covered with nanostructures, magnified 200 times. Credit: RMIT University
Dr Rajesh Ramanathan, said:
“The advantage of textiles is they already have a 3D structure so they are great at absorbing light, which in turn speeds up the process of degrading organic matter.
There’s more work to do to before we can start throwing out our washing machines, but this advance lays a strong foundation for the future development of fully self-cleaning textiles.
Our next step will be to test our nano-enhanced textiles with organic compounds that could be more relevant to consumers, to see how quickly they can handle common stains like tomato sauce or wine.”
via ecouterre
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