There has been increased interest to develop protective fabrics and clothing for protecting the wearer from hazards such as chemical, biological, heat, UV, pollutants etc. Protective fabrics have been conventionally developed using a wide variety of techniques. However, these conventional protective fabrics lack breathability. For example, conventional protective fabrics offer good protection against water but have limited ability in removing the water vapor and moisture. Fibers and membranes fabricated using electrospinning have demonstrated tremendous potential to develop protective fabrics and clothing. These fabrics based on electrospun fibers and membranes have the potential to provide thermal comfort to the wearer and protect the wearer from wide variety of environmental hazards. This review highlights the emerging applications of electrospinning for developing such breathable and protective fabrics.

both antibiotics and disinfectants. Thus, the biofilm increases its density and complexity. In addition, autoinducer molecules help the bacterial cells to communicate with each other. The communication between the cells enables the EPS matrix to adapt to multiple situations. The bacteria continue to grow and form a mushroom-like structure. During this process, channels connect the different colonies of bacteria, which allow nutrients to flow deep into the biofilm, preventing growth termination.The final stage is an oversaturation of the microbial cells. Once the biofilm reaches critical mass, the outermost layer of the biofilm generates planktonic organisms. The EPS temporarily removes the protective layer during this stage, allowing the bacterial cells to disperse from the biofilm. [36] Bacteria that leave the biofilm tend to colonize other surfaces.

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the use of electrospinning to produce hierarchical fibrous structures for antibacterial and antifungal applications. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are produced in situ within an electrospinning solution with the help of a solvent acting as a reducing agent. Ag NP-filled poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) fibers were produced by electrospinning this solution. The collected fibers were placed on top of a porous anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) template, and the setup was heated above the glass-transition temperature (T g ) of the polymer. Heating above T g enabled the polymer to flow into the porous channels of the AAO template and led to the fabrication of hierarchical PVDF-HFP fibers filled with Ag NPs. The microstructure of the samples revealed that the nanostructures were formed uniformly on the surface of the fibers. The wettability of the samples was measured by determining the contact angle, and it was revealed that the wettability of hierarchical fibrous structures was higher than the wettability of PVDF-HFP-filled Ag NPs. Lastly, the antimicrobial activity results revealed that both PVDF-HFP fibers filled with Ag NPs and the hierarchical PVDF-HFP fibers filled with Ag NPs exhibited inhibition against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida albicans. The antibacterial and antifungal performance for the samples was determined, and it was found that the hierarchical fibrous structures showed the highest antibacterial and antifungal performance against MRSA, P. aeruginosa, and C. albicans in comparison to the neat PVDF-HFP fibers and PVDF-HFP fibers filled with Ag NPs. We also demonstrated that these fibers can be strongly antibacterial and antifungal after a number of usages. This may be attributed to the slow and long-lasting release of silver ions from the electrospun fibers. Hierarchical PVDF-HFP filled with Ag NPs showed the lowest relative bacterial viability (less than 5%) against MRSA in all three cycles. The relative bacterial and fungal viability against P. aeruginosa and C. albicans was determined to be less than 15%. These findings demonstrate that the fabricated antibacterial and antifungal fibers show tremendous promise for applications such as air filtration, water treatment, protective clothing, and so forth.

This study aims to produce a hydrophobic polymer film by mimicking the hierarchical micro/nanostructures found on the surface of rose petals. A simple and two-step UV-based nanoimprint lithography was used to copy rose petal structures on the surface of a polyurethane acrylate (PUA) film. In the first step, the rose petal was used as a template, and its negative replica was fabricated on a commercial UV-curable polymer film. Following this, the negative replica was used as a stamp to produce rose petal mimetic structures on UV curable PUA film. The presence of these structures on PUA influenced the wettability behavior of PUA. Introducing the rose petal mimetic structures led the inherently hydrophilic material to display highly hydrophobic behavior. The neat PUA film showed a contact angle of 65°, while the PUA film with rose petal mimetic structures showed a contact angle of 138°. Similar to natural materials, PUA with rose petal mimetic structures also displayed the water pinning effect. The water droplet was shown to have adhered to the surface of PUA even when the surface was turned upside down.

In this study, we produced bioinspired micro/nanotopography on the surface of poly­(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) films and demonstrated that these films display antibacterial properties. In the first step, structures that are found on the surface of a rose petal were copied on the surface of PVDF-HFP films. Following this, a hydrothermal method was used to grow ZnO nanostructures on top of this rose petal mimetic surface. The antibacterial behavior of the fabricated sample was demonstrated against Gram-positive Streptococcus agalactiae (S. agalactiae) and Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) as model bacteria. For comparison purposes, the antibacterial behavior of a neat PVDF-HFP film was also investigated against both bacterial species. The results show that the presence of rose petal mimetic structures on PVDF-HFP helped the material to display improved antibacterial performance against both S. agalactiae and E. coli compared to the antibacterial performance of neat PVDF-HFP. The antibacterial performance was further enhanced for samples that had both rose petal mimetic topography and ZnO nanostructures on the surface.