Core–Shell Yarn Woven Metafabric: Integrated Autonomous Sweat Transport and Radiative-Perspirative Cooling
摘要
Although the bionic evaporative cooling mechanism is regarded as a key path to enhance the thermal management efficiency of the human body outdoors, the structural limitations of traditional fabrics and the bottleneck of heat transfer efficiency led to sweat retention, intensifying the skin’s heat load and restricting the realization of the goal of microenvironment comfort regulation. Here, a metafabric with unidirectional sweat transport and three cooling modes is innovatively fabricated by weaving core–shell yarns via mature weaving techniques. The gradient wetting structure formed in the fabric through the plasma treatment can pull liquid water out of the skin and diffuse it to the outer layer of the fabric for rapid evaporation (0.41 g h−1), which is in a leading position in the field of sweat evaporation of cotton materials. Meanwhile, the addition of heat-conducting substances in shell nanofibers has improved the sweat cooling utilization rate of cotton fabrics, providing an additional skin temperature drop of 3.5 ℃ through sweat evaporation. In the outdoor experiment simulating human sweating, a temperature reduction of 7 ℃ is observed for skin-covered metafabric compared with skin-covered cotton fabric. Owing to its exceptional performance, the metafabric can provide promising design guidelines for developing a thermal-moisture comfort textile.
Graphical Abstract