Researchers Develop Smart Thermal Management Fabrics
A new thermoregulating textile keeps its wearers comfortable with a minimal amount of energy input, thanks to a conductive polymer that can be modified to adjust how much infrared radiation it sheds.
According to the textile’s developers, the new wearable variable-emittance device, or WeaVE, could be used to make next-generation smart thermal management fabrics.
The new WeaVE device consists of three layers. One is an active layer made of a conducting polymer called polyaniline (PANI), second is a metallised nylon and third is a semi-solid electrolyte.
“When a small voltage is applied to this layered structure, the active material switches between a transmissive dielectric state and a lossy metallic state,” Physics World reported.
Each state has a different emissivity, so by switching between them, the amount of thermal radiation the fabric puts out can be adjusted to make it either heat-emitting (cooling) or heat-shielding (heating).
The textile can thus keep the wearer comfortable by adjusting how much body heat is retained and how much is radiated away and so the user would feel the same skin temperature regardless of the external temperature.
