Image credit: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have invented a fabric that keeps you warm using indoor lighting. The technology is the result of an 80-year quest to synthesize textiles based on polar bear fur. The research was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and has now been developed into a commercial product.
Polar bears live in some of the harshest environments on the planet and are unfazed by Arctic temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius. While bears have a number of adaptations that allow them to thrive even when temperatures plummet, scientists have been paying particular attention to the adaptability of their fur since the 1940s. How does a polar bear's fur keep it warm?
Many polar animals actively utilize sunlight to maintain their body temperature, and polar bear fur is a well-known example. For decades, scientists have known that part of the bears' secret is their white fur. It is generally believed that black fur absorbs heat better, but polar bear fur has proven to be very effective at transferring solar radiation to the skin.
Polar bear fur is essentially a natural fiber that conducts sunlight to the bear's skin, which absorbs the light and heats the bear. And the fur is also very good at preventing the warm skin from giving off all that hard-won heat. When the sun shines, it's like having a thick blanket available to warm yourself up and then hold the warmth against your skin.
The research team devised a two-layer fabric whose top layer consists of threads that, like polar bear fur, conduct visible light to the lower layer, which is made of nylon and coated with a dark-colored material called PEDOT. PEDOT acts like the skin of a polar bear to retain warmth.
A jacket made from this material is 30% lighter than the same cotton jacket, and its light and heat trapping structure works efficiently enough to heat the body directly using existing indoor lighting. By concentrating energy resources around the body to create a "personal climate", this method is more sustainable than existing methods of heating and warming.
Post time: Feb-27-2024