High-tech fabrics currently in development include exotic materials that self-clean, derive from milk proteins and come from 3-D prints that do away with a needle and thread altogether.
Here is a list of some of the fabrics that you may wear in the future.
Engineers Deyong Wu and Mingce Long knew that titanium oxide – the white goop used for sunblock – could act as a catalyst to degrade organic pollutants, a potential boon to create self-cleaning fabrics. However, the pollutant-blasting chemical only works under ultraviolet radiation – not so good for humans.
The duo came up with a solution – adding a hint of silver and painting the mixture onto cotton to make a self-cleaning fabric.
Wu and Long verified the self-cleaning properties of the silver/ titanium oxide cotton using methyl orange as a test pollutant. Scientists typically use methyl orange to test the pH of chemicals. Best of all, the coating became active under visible light.
The journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces published the research online Nov. 8.
ACS
How would you like your milk - in a glass or on a spool? Milk is the basis for a new fabric released in 2011 called Qmilch, invented by German fashion designer Anke Domaske (www.milkotex.com).
"It feels like silk and it doesn't smell -- you can wash it just like anything else," Domaske said in an interview with Reuters.
The milk fabric made a splash when Domaske announced the invention in 2011. The invention won the 28-year-old the innovation award of the Textile Research Association in Germany.
The fabric comes from the milk protein casein and its developer said the fabrics come from milk that would otherwise be thrown out. Engineers extract the casein from dried milk, heat the mix with other natural ingredients and the spin the resulting fibers into strands.
Domaske sells her milk-derived clothing under the label Mademoiselle Chi Chi (www.mcc-style.com), a fabric she said is anti-microbial and anti-aging.
"We have developed an all-natural fiber consisting of a very high concentration of casein, with a few other natural ingredients -- and in only two years," Domaske, a former microbiology student, said.
One dress takes about six liters (nearly a gallon and a half) of milk and costs from €150 ($199).
Milkotex
Why use a needle and thread when you can just print a garment ready-to-wear?
The technology hasn’t gotten there yet, but it’s getting closer with companies like Freedom of Creation that currently offers bags, jewelry and accessories from its 3D printers.
“Instead of producing textiles by the meter, then cutting and sewing them into final products, this concept has the ability to make needle and thread obsolete,” designer Jiri Evenhuis Evenhuis told Ecouterre. Evenhuis teamed up with Janne Kyttanen of Freedom of Creation to create several 3D-printed items (www.freedomofcreation.com).
Freedom of Creation
Silicon is typically associated with computer chips, but one manufacturer, ZeroLoft, generated a gel from silica that can act as a thermal insulator (zeroloft.com).
Aerogel is a 90 percent air, but what remains is a silica matrix that its makers say is strong, thin and flexible.
Aerogel skips the puffiness usually associated with cold insulators and instead depends on the low thermal conductivity of silica, which means that the insulator can be thin and yet effective. In one example, when Aerogel encounters a 1,000 degree Celsius flame one one side, the flipside is cooled to 70 degrees Celsius, still hot, but cool enough to touch.
The gel has other properties, including being water repellent, breathable and light.
ZeroLoft
The U.S. Army is weaving a monitoring system right in the underwear of its soldiers.
The “wear and forget physiological sensing system” monitors the respiration, heart rate, skin temperature and posture of soldiers as they are in the field and could help quickly identify critical conditions during battle and also help select for missions.
“Ultimately, intelligent undergarments could provide data on factors such as altitude adaptation, burn and blunt trauma, blood volume, metabolic activity, CBRN exposure, life sign detection and respiratory distress -- data that that predictive algorithms could be exploited,” Allison Barrie wrote for FoxNews.
Engineers with the US Army Medical Research and Material Command Office developed the technology along with the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Centre, Foster-Miller and Malden Mills.
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