Technology products: self-cleaning cotton cloth that touches the sun

Imagine that when you touch ordinary sunlight, jeans, sweat, or socks that hang on a clothesline or on a balcony rail can clean and remove odors. American scientists have reported a new cotton fabric that can clean its own stains and bacteria when exposed to normal sunlight. This report was published in "ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces."

Mingce Long and Deyong Wu said that their fabrics use a composite titanium dioxide coating, which is used for everything from white paint to food to sunscreen lotions. When titanium dioxide is exposed to a certain type of light, it can decompose dirt and kill microorganisms. It has been used for self-cleaning windows, kitchen and bathroom tiles, odor-free socks and other products. The authors of the report pointed out that self-cleaning cotton fabrics have been produced in the past, but they can only clean themselves when exposed to ultraviolet light. Therefore, they set out to develop a new cotton fabric that can self-clean when exposed to ordinary sunlight.

Their report describes cotton fabrics made from nanoparticles coated with titanium dioxide and nitrogen compounds. They say that when exposed to sunlight, the coated fabric material will remove orange dye stains. The nanoparticles composed of silver and iodine are further decomposed, accelerating their discoloration process. The coating is still intact after washing and drying.

Cao Haihong, China Textile Network Information Officer