Cool fashion! Fabric developed in China can cool wearer by almost 5 degrees Celsius

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Researchers at the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in the Zhejiang University say they have developed a special fabric that can reflect light, and cool down the body temperature by almost five degrees Celsius, as seen in Hangzhou on Saturday, July 24.

“The project is to research how the cloth can reflect the sunshine,” explains Ma Yaoguang, the director of the institute. “We need to make the cloth to classify lights from the different frequency bands and process them differently. So, it can work for the lights in both solar spectrum and mid-infrared spectrum,” he added.

Yaoguang and his colleagues came up with a fabric - thick enough to be worn like a T-shirt - that uses chemical bonds to absorb body heat before re-emitting it into the air as mid-infrared radiation.

Called radiative cooling, the technique has been used in a lot of different materials, such as plastic films and wood.

“Now, the main challenge for us is to make the fabric in mass production,” the scientist said.

SOUNDBITES:

SOT, Ma Yaoguang, Director of the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in Zhejiang University (Mandarin): “The project is to research how the cloth can reflect the sunshine. The cloth needs to possess two main features. On one hand, it should reflect the solar spectrum properly. On the other hand, it needs to re-emit mid-infrared radiation (MIR) from 8-13 Micra. We need to make the cloth to classify lights from the different frequency bands and process them differently. So, it can work for the lights in both solar spectrum and mid-infrared spectrum.”

SOT, Ma Yaoguang, Director of the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in Zhejiang University (Mandarin): “There are different layers in the cloth. The material in different layers is in different sizes and thickness, which is linked to the light wave it needs to reflect. So, the cloth can work more sufficiently.”

SOT, Ma Yaoguang, Director of the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in Zhejiang University (Mandarin): “The project started in 2019. It went forward smoothly, but when it came to mass production, it gets harder and we had to modify the cloth.”

SOT, Ma Yaoguang, Director of the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in Zhejiang University (Mandarin): “Now, the main challenge for us is to make the fabric in mass production. We need to fix the technical issues from the lab result for the mass production. How to do quality control and put the lab product into mass production. We will try to improve the cloth’s function as well but it needs to fit with the demand of the mass production.”

SOT, Ma Yaoguang, Director of the Institute of Optoelectronics Engineering in Zhejiang University (Mandarin): “Now we only have small-amount production samples. I think we will employ the new cloth in protection suits for medical workers against COVID-19 and construction base to cool them down.”

#ZhejiangUniversity #Hangzhou #China

Video ID: 20210731-013

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