The COVID-19 pandemic has hugely affected the textile and apparel industry. Besides the negative impact due to supply chain disruptions, drop in demand, liquidity problems, and overstocking, this pandemic was found to be a window of opportunity since it accelerated the ongoing digitalization trends and the use of functional materials in the textile industry. This review paper covers the development of smart and advanced textiles that emerged as a response to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. We extensively cover the advancements in developing smart textiles that enable monitoring and sensing through electrospun nanofibers and nanogenerators. Additionally, we focus on improving medical textiles mainly through enhanced antiviral capabilities, which play a crucial role in pandemic prevention, protection, and control. We summarize the challenges that arise from personal protective equipment (PPE) disposal and finally give an overview of new smart textile-based products that emerged in the markets related to the control and spread reduction of SARS-CoV-2.

Textile products are of great importance in the dissemination of newly developed communication devices and flexible electronics in conjunction with the advantages of covering the entire human body and being used all day long by all individuals in society. Various approaches have been developed to ensure the required electrical conductivity of textiles. Our research deals with melt spinning of carbon nanomaterial-based composites (CNCs) into electrically conductive filaments. By combining the various composite structures and property profiles with a conductive filler at high concentration, specific morphological structures can be achieved that offer a much higher potential for the development of new functional fibers for different smart textile applications.This study aims to produce nanocomposites from polyamide 6 (PA6) and polyethylene (PE) matrices with single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) and multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) by using a small-scale mixing device that provides short mixing time, and material savings in the first stage of the research.

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Thermal conditions in the track of an arc on a solid insulator are analyzed from the point of view of the recovery dielectric strength.It is shown quantitatively that feedback from the arc-track can delay the recovery of the residual arc column.Relationships to estimate the temperature diffusion from the "melted" arc-track are presented.These are compared wi th the temperature decay in the residual arc column.The power flow into the insulation body required for thermal analysis was determined experimentally.

Combining the several mixed phase structures and property profiles with a conductive, high aspect ratios nanofiller such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and carbon black, specific morphological structures in melt spinning can be reached that offer much more potential for developing new functional fibers. Thus, understanding and controlling filler localization inside the developing phase morphology during melt spinning are the keys to the necessary structures. This work aimed to offer the possibility of producing fibers from electrically conductive polymer composites with a high filler concentration. First, the influence of different commercially available nanofillers, such as multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), graphene and carbon black on Polyamide 6 (PA6)-based nanocomposite melt-spun fibers were examined. Following the lab-scale melt spinning experiments, PA6/MWCNT-CB nanocomposite filaments containing 10 wt% nanofiller (each 5 wt%), were chosen for a pilot-scale bicomponent melt spinning process to investigate the influence of the nanocomposite core material feeding parameters on the properties of melt-spun fibers. The electrical conductivity decreased by half (from 3.13E-02 to 6.72E-03) when melt flow rate was increased from 3 g/min to 6 g/min. Scanning electron microscopy micrographs and thermal gravimetric analysis thermograms showed that the change in MFR values significantly affected the nanocomposite filaments’ surface properties.