Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Self-Healing Textiles! Say Goodbye To Torn Jeans
Yes, those torn jeans can at last repair themselves! Too bad, fashionable people, you're going to join the ranks of the properly clothed, thanks to advances made by researchers at Penn State.
The procedure is simple. The material to be coated is dipped in a series of liquids to create layers of material to form a self-healing, polyelectrolyte layer-by-layer coating.
This coating is deposited "under ambient conditions in safe solvents, such as water, at low cost using simple equipment amenable to scale-up," the researchers report online in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Polyelectrolyte coatings are made up of positively and negatively charged polymers, in this case polymers like those in squid ring teeth proteins.
"We currently dip the whole garment to create the advanced material," said Demirel, who is also a member of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. "But we could do the threads first, before manufacturing if we wanted to."
During the layering, enzymes can be incorporated into the coating. The researchers used urease -- the enzyme that breaks urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide -- but in commercial use, the coating would be tailored with enzymes matched to the chemical being targeted.
"If you need to use enzymes for biological or chemical effects, you can have an encapsulated enzyme with self-healing properties degrade the toxin before it reaches the skin," said Demirel.
Many toxic substances can be absorbed through the skin. Organophosphates, for example, which are used as herbicides and insecticides are absorbed through the skin and can be lethal. Some of these chemicals have also been used as nerve agents. A garment coated with a self-healing film containing an organophosphate hydrolase, an enzyme that breaks down the toxic material, could limit exposure. The squid ring teeth polymer is self-healing in the presence of water, so laundering would repair micro and macro defects in the coating, making the garments rewearable and reusable.
"The coatings are thin, less than a micron, so they wouldn't be noticed in everyday wear," said Demirel. "Even thin, they increase the overall strength of the material."
Science fiction writers have this advance already in hand, thank you very much. In his 1970 short story Say Goodby to the Wind, the incomparable JG Ballard describes bio-fabric:
"Fashion designers use natural fibers made of proteins like wool or silk that are expensive and they are not self-healing," said Melik C. Demirel, professor of engineering science and mechanics. "We were looking for a way to make fabrics self-healing using conventional textiles. So we came up with this coating technology."
...Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture [see inert-wear] that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure, but from living tissues that adapt themselves to the contours and personality of the wearer. Other advantages are the continued growth of the materials, fed by the body odours and perspriration of the wearer, the sweet liqueurs distilled from her own pores, and the constant renewal of the fibers, repairing any faults or ladders and eliminating the need for washing.
(Read much more about the Ballardian bio-fabric )
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/13/2016)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Clothing ")
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...' - JG Ballard, 1970.
Rigid Metallic Clothing From Science Fiction To You
'...support the interior human structure against Jupiter’s pull.' - Edmond Hamilton, 1932.
iPhone Pocket All Sold Out!
'A long, strong, slender net...' - Margaret St. Clair, 1949.
Skip Movewear Arc'teryx AI Exoskeleton Pants
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.' - Edmond Hamilon, 1930.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Displays
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...'
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles!
'Separate paths were provided for them...'
