Self-Cleaning Fabrics: What Are They and How Are They Used?
2018
Raivis Eglītis, Gundars Mežinskis, Ieva Buiķe

Self-cleaning fabrics are textile materials, which under the influence of various external environmental factors have the ability to rid their surface from various contaminants. Such fabrics make it possible to reduce water and energy consumption associated with washing clothes, to reduce the risk of infections due to their biocidal properties, and to protect people from UV radiation. In addition, such fabrics would also be more difficult to wet. This would reduce the possibility of wet clothes in damp climates. Such effects by self-cleaning fabrics could be achieved through mechanisms of photocatalysis and superhydrophobicity. To develop textiles with above mentioned properties, the most suitable approach is the deposition of coatings formed by ZnO and TiO2 nanoparticles. In turn, the sol-gel method should be used to obtain coatings. This would make it possible to create homogeneous coatings at temperatures that organic materials can withstand. Institute of Design Technologies, Riga Technical University, has been working on the development of such fabrics since 2011. The research in the field of such coatings at the Institute of Silicate Materials, Riga Technical University, has been performed since 2016. Thanks to decades long research in sol-gel technology and nanostructured coatings, the development of commercially available technologies for cotton fabrics has been successfully launched at the Institute of Silicate Materials.


Keywords
self-cleaning fabrics, sol-gel method, TiO2, ZnO.
DOI
10.7250/msac-2018-0011

Eglītis, R., Mežinskis, G., Buiķe, I. Self-Cleaning Fabrics: What Are They and How Are They Used?. Materials Sciences and Applied Chemistry / Materiālzinātne un lietišķā ķīmija , 2018, Vol.35 No. 1, pp.216-232. e-ISSN 2255-8713. Available from: doi:10.7250/msac-2018-0011

Publication language
Latvian (lv)
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