Material scientists have developed a new cotton fabric that
cleans itself of stains and bacteria when exposed to sunlight. This would mean you could transform your garments
from stinky to sparkly simply by simply hanging them out in the
Mingce Long and Deyong Wu from Donghua University developed the
fabric using a coating made from a compound of titanium dioxide and
nitrogen. This breaks down stains and kills microbes when exposed
to some types of light.
Titanium dioxide has already found uses in self-cleaning windows, kitchen and bathroom tiles. The authors
admit that there are already other self-cleaning fabrics but these
tend to work most efficiently when exposed to intense ultraviolet
rays. This coating works within the visible spectrum.
Fabric coated with the material could easily remove an orange
dye stain when exposed to sunlight. Further nanoparticles made from
silver and iodine helps to accelerate the discoloration process.
The coating even remains after washing and drying the clothes. Although presumably that
wouldn't be necessary if the Sun already did the leg-work.
The study appears in ACS Applied
Materials & Interfaces.