Scientists in China have developed a new self-healing coating that can turn ordinary cotton into a fire-retardant, waterproof and self-cleaning super fabric. Involving techniques like triple-dip coating in a series of polymers, this super-fabric is envisioned to be particularly useful in the fabrication of military uniforms or other textiles faced with similarly challenging environment.
Studying flame-retardant textiles, commonly found in things like soft furnishings, researchers realized that the fireproof coatings on these fabrics tend to be short-lived, either due to abrasive wear or due to regular washing. To undertake this, a piece of standard cotton was coated with numerous different layers of ammonium polyphosphate, branched poly(ethylenimine) and superhydrophobic surface layer of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane, similar to Teflon, because of which, the fabric is both repellent and can be easily cleaned with water. In lab tests, the fabric could be successfully healed 10 times, though increasingly slowly.
