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The mechanisms underlying the metafabric have been used in other applications, such as reflective paint for buildings and space shuttles, but “this is the first time it has become a textile, and that’s exciting,” he says. YuHuang Wang, A professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, who did not participate in the research. “It’s a pretty interesting job that shows you can incorporate new features into the textile.” Wang noted that the study of the group’s vests and car covers is important because they show real use cases for consumer goods.
It is important that metafabric also functions as a regular fabric. It can be rotated to spools; it is longer than cotton and as durable as spandex. This means that it can be used with existing commercial sewing machines and for making any clothing without the need for special equipment or hand sewing, according to Ma and her team.
This can break the barrier that metafabrics have with other tissues for heat management. Jyotirmoy MandalA postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles who studied metamaterials and radiative cooling and did not participate in the study, noted that researchers have considered comfort, durability, and large-scale manufacturing practices when designing metafabric, often lacking other cooling or tissue heating. “It’s really nice that they show us a very scalable way to do that, which means we should see that we use it soon,” he says.
However, the metafactory can face some commercial challenges, as the clothing industry is highly competitive. “A lot of it goes into what makes something acceptable as an outfit. There are a lot of fabric features that are hard to describe, even less engineering,” says Gerbik – features like sustainability, texture and very subjective but very important aspects of fashion and creativity.
Erik Torgerson, An engineer at the SRI International Safety and Survival Laboratory, a study in the APRA-funded field has indicated that adding titanium dioxide particles to textiles in the same way as the metafabric can make clothes heavier. And products made with fabrics that work by reflecting light should be almost white, Torgenson said, thus limiting consumer choices.
The Ma team has not tested consumers ’feelings about the metafabric, but they say it has hit about 40 or 50 companies that are interested in using it. One of them, Read onA Chinese outdoor and sporting goods company, it is working with researchers to study large-scale manufacturing. “If metafabric is mass-produced, products made from fabric will be made first,” says Vice President Byron Chen Toread, of metafabric clothing, tents, buildings and even cold chain transport number of foods and vaccines.
If metafactories and other emerging fabrics find their way to the market, they may have a role to play in adapting to climate change. The last United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicts warmer global temperatures and more frequent heat waves. In the US alone, heat stroke causes or contributes to the environment 700 dead every year; if that number has over time it rose steadily. The International Energy Agency expects global demand for air conditioning triple over the next 30 years.
Fabrics for personal heat management may one day offer some sort of alternative to air conditioning. Therefore, it is important for the Ma group to reduce prices. Guangming Tao, a senior project researcher and professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, says materials and labor are usually only a small part of the total price of clothing; the rest usually a Between 55 and 60 percent marking of retail markets. It is estimated that swapping the metafactory with another fabric will increase material costs by about 1 percent.
“We are trying to make it as cheap as possible so that it will be able to serve all people who are not rich and not powerful,” says Ma. “That’s one of my aspirations: to benefit normal people from technology.”
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