Developed smart tissue that reacts to changes in body temperature

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    A joint team of American and Chinese scientists has developed a smart fabric that can respond to changes in the temperature of the human body. The higher the temperature, the more strongly the fibers of the fabric are compressed, which increases the transparency of the material for thermal radiation. Conversely, the lower the temperature, the more "fluffy" the fabric becomes.

    Actually, about the same regulatory mechanism used by the birds - if the temperature is low and you need to warm up, they use feather cover and become "fluffy." If the temperature is high, the feathers fit as closely as possible to the surface of the body, the body quickly cools as the feathers become “transparent” to heat.

    A person does not have such opportunities to control the temperature of his body, like birds do, so one has to develop specialized technologies. The modern sportswear industry has already partially solved the problem - the materials that remove heat (or, on the contrary, it is retained) are created. But these fabrics work in the same mode and are unable to adapt to changes in external conditions.

    Experts from the University of Maryland were able to solve this problem. They developed specialized adaptive fabric., which changes the ability to pass thermal radiation and water vapor. This, in turn, allows you to cool the human body with significant physical exertion. Smart fabric, developed by scientists, consists of a large number of fibers. Each of them is compound, 50% fiber is cellulose, 50% is triacetate.

    Cellulose is hydrophilic, triacetate is hydrophobic. The higher the humidity, the stronger the threads approach each other. In addition, there is a third component - carbon nanotubes. Thanks to them, the fibers, when approaching, activate the process of resonant electromagnetic binding. The latter increases the emissivity of the fibers, in this case the radiation spectrum shifts to a range of 5-15 micrometers. This is precisely the range of thermal radiation of the human body. The more closely the individual fibers adjoin each other, the stronger the convection process, so that the cooling takes place thanks to it.

    Smart fabric has several beneficial properties at once: it removes moisture and allows the body to cool quickly at high ambient temperatures. Well, when the temperature drops, the same fabric retains heat and moisture. As for the parameters of the fabric, with increasing humidity up to about 90%, its transmitting ability with respect to heat increases by 35.4%.


    Smart fabric from the University of Maryland can be even smarter if you combine this technology with others. As an example, Project Jacquard is a development by Google, which gives the fabric the ability to “understand” the owner of the clothes that are sewn of this fabric. The core technology of Jackard is a fiber capable of carrying a signal. The fabric is assembled in approximately the same mesh as the conductive layer under the displays of the gadgets.

    When you click on the fabric or hold it with your finger, an electrical signal is generated that can be caught and processed. So, the fabric not only "understands" when it is pressed, but also "feels" in what movement it is traced with a finger. If you use a computer for analysis, you can imagine how holding on the fabric will allow you to adjust the sound volume in the smartphone, answer the call, or perform any other operations familiar to the modern user.

    Google believes that smart clothing should be part of the new development of the technology direction - Wearable Technology. Electronics may soon leave the pockets and bags and will be much closer to the user. Moreover, if the phone can break, the clothes are affected by external factors to a much lesser extent. In this case, the signal handler is, for example, a cufflink, which determines the type of user interaction with the clothing.

    Well, there are many uses here. Last year, it was reported that many services are cooperating with Google, who want to become part of Wearable Technology. Among others - Strava and Spotify.

    Gradually, smart clothes are becoming more common and smart. Perhaps in 5-10 years we will consider smart T-shirts, hoodies and jackets to be something quite ordinary, like mobile phones are now.

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