No abstract

Textiles with excellent moisture transport characteristics play key role in regulating comfort of the body, and use of color in textiles helps in developing aesthetically pleasing apparels. Herein, we report an aesthetically pleasing and breathable dual-layer cellulose acetate (CA) based nanofibrous membranes with exceptional directional moisture transport performance. The outer layer was synthesized by subjecting CA nanofibers to hydrolysis and reactive dyeing processes, which converted moderately hydrophobic CA nanofibers into uniformly colored superhydrophilic CA nanofibers with an excellent wettability. In addition to excellent wettability and superhydrophilic nature, dyed CA (DCA) nanofibers also offered high color yield and dye fixation as well as considerable colorfastness performance against washing and light, thus, were used as the outer layer. However, pristine CA nanofibers were chosen as the inner layer for their moderate hydrophobicity. The subsequent CA/DCA nanofiber membrane produced a high wettability gradient, which facilitated directional moisture transport from CA to DCA layers. The resultant dual-layer nanofiber membranes offered a high color yield of 16.33 with ∼82% dye fixation, excellent accumulative one-way transport capacity (919%), remarkable overall moisture management capacity (0.89), and reasonably high water vapor transport rate (12.11 kg d m), suggesting them to be a potential substrate for fast sweat-release applications.

No abstract

No abstract

Liquid moisture (sweat) transport properties of textile materials play critical role in maintaining the comfort of body which are mainly controlled by surface chemistry, structure, and morphology of substrate. Herein, a dual layer surface treated nonwoven (NW)/electrospun nanofiber membrane with excellent differential liquid moisture transport characteristics is reported. NW is used as inner layer for its high moisture releasing and low moisture absorbing features, and polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as outer layer because of its decent hydrophilic nature. Wettability of NW is tailored by surface treatment with polydopamine, and the wicking characteristics of PAN nanofibers are enhanced by inducing hydrophilic SiO2 nanoparticles (PAN‐SiO2). Performance of resultant surface treated NW (TNW)/PAN‐SiO2 nanofiber composite membranes is thoroughly characterized by moisture management tester (MMT). Subsequent composite membranes offer high wettability gradient which leads to their marvelous MMT performance with an outstanding one‐way transport capacity of 1413%, excellent overall moisture management capacity of 0.99, and a decent water vapor transfer rate of 12.73 kg m−2 d−1, indicating a potential candidate for faster sweat release applications.