What if your own T-shirt could detect illness in your body or keep itself clean?
Cornell University is one of 32 universities to make fashions that do more than just make you look good.
$317 million in grants is making way for fabrics that can kill bacteria, monitor your health and much more.
It’s the science of “smart” fabrics.
Cornell’s Juan Hinestroza, an associate professor of fiber science, says the “textiles industry is on the verge of a revolution,” and it’s happening in his own lab.
“The idea is to add an additional function to textiles,” Hinestroza explained. “Our ultimate goal is to have fibers that can hear, fibers than can see, fibers that can sense, fibers that can act and your clothing becomes like a second skin.”
The “smart” fabrics research is now on a fast-track for use in apparel, transportation, electronics and a wide range of consumer products, as well as protective gear for soldiers and first responders.
Hinestroza has been studying these functional fabrics to create a “second skin” for 11 years in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design in the College of Human Ecology.
His team is now part of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) along with many universities including MIT.
Clothes that can keep themselves clean would not only save you time and money, but it would limit the use of chemicals like bleach and detergent altogether, according to Hinestroza.
He says the fabric technology will be a part of non-chemical dyes and water-repellent clothing.
It’s none other than cotton that’s the focus of “smart” fabric technology.
Hinestroza says cotton has been used for more than 6,000 years and it could become the “fabric of the future.”
For example, Hinestroza shows our NewsChannel 9 crew how silver nano-particles can become part of a cotton garment and then be used to kill bacteria or analyze your sweat to provide information about your health.
“We take cotton as a fabric and then we modify it with nano-particles, with nano-rods, with nano-wires,” Hinestroza said. “These little structures can assemble on the fibers without changing the way the cotton feels or cotton behaves.”
Hinestroza says these textiles will have the ability to give you medicine through your skin and even massage you. These same fibers can be implemented into a toothbrush, which can then tell you if you have other health issues while brushing your teeth.
He says the “second skin” will adapt and change as you go about your daily life.
“If you go and play soccer, then you can change the color of your jersey so everybody will be orange,” Hinestroza explained. “Then, once you finish, the bacteria from your sweat will be killed so it will not smell bad. Then, you can go to a party and it becomes black and then you go to a Cornell game, then it becomes red.”
Thousands of nano-fibers so small you need an atomic force microscope to see them, but what they can do might be the biggest thing to hit the runway.
Hinestroza says “smart” fabrics are not only going to change the way fashion designers create clothing lines, but it will create more businesses and in turn, jobs.
The teams designing these smart fabrics say the technology could create 50,000 jobs across the fashion industry over the next 10 years.
Cornell expects to contribute to efforts to train New York-based workers in partnership with NYSTAR, the Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation, and a statewide network of community colleges.
