Chapter 9 - Potential of graphene-modified nanostructures for multifunctional personal protective clothing

Abstract

Personal protective clothing (PPC) is a prerequisite for the health safety of individuals exposed to various health hazards, including infectious pathogens. Typically, protective clothing is designed to withstand hazards in a particular work environment. Growing concerns of biothreats and the emergence of recent pandemics underscore the need for PPC with a higher degree of protection and comfortability. Lightweight, high mobility, low physical and thermal stress, improved heat dissipation, and breathability are essential requirements for a comfortable PPC. Unfortunately, conventional protective clothing is less comfortable and provides limited protection against many hazards. However, imparting desired properties to protective clothing may require modifying and tuning the clothing materials/fabrics by incorporating suitable materials/additives. In this aspect, graphene draws researchers’ attention for its unique properties and flexible bonding capabilities. Fabrics modified with graphene or graphene-modified nanostructures could effectively overcome these limitations of conventional protective clothing. Additionally, the unique properties of graphene/graphene derivatives, such as antimicrobial activity, flame resistance, electrothermal conductivity, ultraviolet resistance, breathability, and so on could potentially be shifted to the fabrics modified by graphene. This chapter shed light on the importance of PPC, the limitations of conventional PPC, followed by measures that could be taken to improve PPC, the unique properties of graphene and graphene-modified nanostructures related to PPC, techniques of incorporating graphene/graphene-nanostructures in fabrics, and the modern research in this context and prospects of graphene-modified textiles associated with PPC.