Directional Water Transport Fabrics with Durable Ultra‐High One‐Way Transport Capacity

Abstract

Fabrics with automatic one‐way water transport ability are highly desirable for applications in daily life, industry, health, and defense. However, most of the studies on one‐way water transport fabrics only report the qualitative water transport results. The lack of quantitative measure makes it hard to assess the directional transport quality. Here, it is proved that a hydrophilic fabric after being electrosprayed with a thin layer of hydrophobic coating on one side shows one‐way water transport ability. By using moisture management tester, the water transport property is qualitatively characterized and the effect of hydrophobic fabric layer thickness on one‐way water transport feature is examined. The hydrophobic fabric layer thickness is found to play a key role in deciding the one‐way transport ability. When a plain woven fabric with an overall thickness of 420 μm and average pore size of 33 μm is used as fabric substrate, a hydrophobic fabric layer thickness between 22 and 62 μm allows the treated fabric to show a one‐way droplet transport feature. A one‐way transport index as high as 861 can be attained. The one‐way water transport is durable enough to withstand repeated washing. This novel fabric may be useful for development of “smart” textiles for various applications.

Heat Transfer in Directional Water Transport Fabrics

“…In our previous paper [33], we showed that treatment with NaOH gives the polyester fiber a hydrophilic surface because of the hydrolysis of polyester in alkaline conditions. SU-8 treatment allowed the treated fibers to have a hydrophobic feature.…”

“…To prepare the directional water transport fabric, SU-8/acetone solution was deposited on one side of the NaOH pre-treated polyester fabric using our previously developed method [33]. The chemical structure of SU-8 is shown in Figure 1a and the apparatus for one-side electrospraying treatment is schematically illustrated in Figure 1b.…”

“…The concept of directional fluid transport, which is also called "one-way liquid transport" or "fluid diode" is a phenomenon widely found in daily life. Examples can be found in one-dimensional (1D) materials, such as spider silk and its inspired designs for water-harvesting [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], two-dimensional (2D) solid surfaces which are fabricated typically by forming a chemical gradient [18][19][20][21][22][23], or chemically homogeneous but surface roughness variation [24][25][26][27][28] using various approaches, and three-dimensional (3D) porous materials such as textile fabrics [1,[5][6][7][29][30][31][32][33], cellulosic paper substrate [34], and electrospun nanofibrous membranes [3,7]. The 3D porous materials with directional water transport property are prepared either by forming a hydrophobicity-to-hydrophilicity gradient or two zones with opposite wettability across thickness.…”

Directional Trans-Planar and Different In-Plane Water Transfer Properties of Composite Structured Bifacial Fabrics Modified by a Facile Three-Step Plasma Treatment

“…In addition, unexpected high water content on the coated face was measured by the MMT. This is due to the measurement method where the sensor of MMT slightly penetrates into the fabric (depth around 60 µm [27]), therefore, the water content measured actually reflects the water content in the surface layer around 60 µm.…”

“…For example, Tian et al [26] used a vapor-phase method to deposit a fluoroalkylsilane on one side of cotton fabric to create directional gating of droplets in air-water system. Zeng et al [27] prepared a one-way water transport fabric by electro-spraying a hydrophobic layer on one side of the fabric. However, most of the current studies only focused on the trans-planar water transport of textile materials, and little research is reported on both trans-planar and in-plane water transport properties.…”