As a functional textile, the directional water transport
textile
has been widely used in daily life due to the ability of excellent
moisture absorption and quick drying. However, it is still a great
challenge to construct a textile that ensures water to transport rapidly
from the skin to the outer environment (positive direction) and prevents
the skin from being rewetted effectively in the reverse direction.
Herein, this study aims to improve the ability of the hydrophobic
layer in moisture management using melt electrowriting (MEW) to fabricate
gradient pore structures precisely. The pore sizes in different layers
can be tailored by altering the collector speed, and thus, the configuration
of the pore structure dominates the process of water transportation.
The unique multilayered structure achieves the directional water transport
effects by improving the permeability with large pores and hindering
the transport with small pores in the reverse direction. Meanwhile,
we use solution electrospinning (SE) technology to fabricate the hydrophilic
layer. The constructed composite membranes exhibit excellent performance
with a one-way transport index R up to 1281% and
a desired overall moisture management capacity (OMMC) of 0.87. This
research outlines an approach to fabricating Janus membranes to enhance
its directional water transport performance, facilitating the MEW
technique to be applied on the more expanded field for directional
water transport textiles.