Bioinspired Multilayered Knitted Fabric with Directional Water Transport and Collection for Personal Sweat Management.

Effective sweat management fabric for sportswear facilitates sweat removal from the skin and elevates the comfort for human. However, when the body is in a strong hot and humid environment or after strenuous exercise, the sweat management fabric will be totally wetted and saturated quickly. As a result, excess sweat cannot be absorbed effectively by the garment, which creates obvious stickiness and heaviness.

The Fastest Capillary Flow in Root-like Networks under Gravity.

Capillary flow has garnered significant attention due to its unique dynamic characteristics that require no external force. Creating a quantitative analytical model to evaluate capillary flow behaviors in root-like networks is essential for enhancing fluid control properties in functional textiles. In this study, we explore the capillary dynamics within root-like networks under the influence of gravity and derive the most rapid capillary flow via structural optimization.

Soft Robotic Textiles for Adaptive Personal Thermal Management.

Thermal protective textiles are crucial for safeguarding individuals, particularly firefighters and steelworkers, against extreme heat, and for preventing burn injuries. However, traditional firefighting gear suffers from statically fixed thermal insulation properties, potentially resulting in overheating and discomfort in moderate conditions, and insufficient protection in extreme fire events. Herein, an innovative soft robotic textile is developed for dynamically adaptive thermal management, providing superior personal protection and thermal comfort across a spectrum of environmental temperatures.

Personal Thermal Management by Radiative Cooling and Heating.

Maintaining thermal comfort within the human body is crucial for optimal health and overall well-being. By merely broadening the set-point of indoor temperatures, we could significantly slash energy usage in building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems. In recent years, there has been a surge in advancements in personal thermal management (PTM), aiming to regulate heat and moisture transfer within our immediate surroundings, clothing, and skin.

Gas-jet propelled hemostats for targeted hemostasis in wounds with irregular shape and incompressibility.

Since hemostats are likely to be flushed off a wound by a massive gushing of blood, achieving rapid and effective hemostasis in complex bleeding wounds with powder hemostats continues to be a significant therapeutic challenge. In order to counter the flushing effect of gushing blood, a gas-jet propelled powder hemostat ((COL/PS)@CaCO-T-TXA) has been developed. (COL/PS)@CaCO-T-TXA dives into the deep bleeding sites of complex wounds for targeted hemostasis.

Dual-Driven Hemostats Featured with Puncturing Erythrocytes for Severe Bleeding in Complex Wounds.

Achieving rapid hemostasis in complex and deep wounds with secluded hemorrhagic sites is still a challenge because of the difficulty in delivering hemostats to these sites. In this study, a Janus particle, SEC-Fe@CaT with dual-driven forces, bubble-driving, and magnetic field- (MF-) mediated driving, was prepared via loading of FeO on a sunflower sporopollenin exine capsule (SEC), and followed by growth of flower-shaped CaCO clusters. The bubble-driving forces enabled SEC-Fe@CaT to self-diffuse in the blood to eliminate agglomeration, and the MF-mediated driving force facilitated the SEC-Fe@CaT countercurrent against blood to access deep bleeding sites in the wounds.

Rational Design of Li-Wicking Hosts for Ultrafast Fabrication of Flexible and Stable Lithium Metal Anodes.

The ever-increasing development of flexible and wearable electronics has imposed unprecedented demand on flexible batteries of high energy density and excellent mechanical stability. Rechargeable lithium (Li) metal battery shows great advantages in terms of its high theoretical energy density. However, the use of Li metal anode for flexible batteries faces huge challenges in terms of its undesirable dendrite growth, poor mechanical flexibility, and slow fabrication speed.

Development of wearable air-conditioned mask for personal thermal management.

A mask that creates a physical barrier to protect the wearer from breathing in airborne bacteria or viruses, reducing the risk of infection in polluted air and potentially contaminated environments, has become a daily necessity for the public especially as COVID-19 has exploded around the world. However, the use of masks often causes soaring temperatures and thick humid air, leading to thermal and wear discomfort and breathing difficulties for a number of people, and further increasing the elevated risk of heat illnesses including heat stroke and heat exhaustion. When wearers become highly active or work under high tension, the excess sweat generated negatively affects the functionality of masks.

Designing a retrievable and scalable cell encapsulation device for potential treatment of type 1 diabetes.

Cell encapsulation has been shown to hold promise for effective, long-term treatment of type 1 diabetes (T1D). However, challenges remain for its clinical applications. For example, there is an unmet need for an encapsulation system that is capable of delivering sufficient cell mass while still allowing convenient retrieval or replacement.

Design of Nanofibrous and Microfibrous Channels for Fast Capillary Flow.

The speed of capillary flow is a key bottleneck in improving the performance of nanofluidic and microfluidic devices for various applications including microfluidic diagnostics, thermal management heat pipes, micromolding devices, functional fabrics, and oil-water separators. Here, we present a novel nanofibrous or microfibrous hollow-wedged channel (named as W-Channel), which can significantly speed up the capillary flow. The capillary flow in the initial 100 s in the nanofibrous W-Channel was shown to be 8 times faster than that in the single-layer strip of the same material when placed vertically and over 20 times faster when placed horizontally.

Structural optimization of porous media for fast and controlled capillary flows.

A general quantitative model of capillary flow in homogeneous porous media with varying cross-sectional sizes is presented. We optimize the porous structure for the minimization of the penetration time under global constraints. Programmable capillary flows with constant volumetric flow rate and linear evolution of flow distance to time are also obtained.

Treelike networks accelerating capillary flow.

Transport in treelike networks has received wide attention in natural systems, oil recovery, microelectronic cooling systems, and textiles. Existing studies are focused on transport behaviors under a constant potential difference (including pressure, temperature, and voltage) in a steady state [B. Yu and B.

Geometry-induced asymmetric capillary flow.

When capillary flow occurs in a uniform porous medium, the depth of penetration is known to increase as the square root of time. However, we demonstrate in this study that the depth of penetration in multi-section porous layers with variation in width and height against the flow time is modified from this diffusive-like response, and liquids can pass through porous systems more readily in one direction than the other. We show here in a model and an experiment that the flow time for a negative gradient of cross-sectional widths is smaller than that for a positive gradient at the given total height of porous layers.

Optimal design of porous structures for the fastest liquid absorption.

Porous materials engineered for rapid liquid absorption are useful in many applications, including oil recovery, spacecraft life-support systems, moisture management fabrics, medical wound dressings, and microfluidic devices. Dynamic absorption in capillary tubes and porous media is driven by the capillary pressure, which is inversely proportional to the pore size. On the other hand, the permeability of porous materials scales with the square of the pore size.