Waste cotton fabric-derived multimodal heating textile for comfortable and reliable personal thermal management

Abstract

Wearable textiles with multiple desirable thermal functions still face significant challenges due to the sophisticated manufacturing techniques and limited sources. This work aimed to innovatively propose a convenient means to up-recycle waste cotton fabrics into an all-in-one heating textile integrating electric heating, outdoor solar heating, and indoor radiative heating for efficacious personal thermal management. The multimodal heating textile is realized by the in-situ growth of vertically-aligned polyaniline nanofibers similar to moth compound eye structure on the surface of cotton fibers and assembling silver nanowires on the backside. Methods for instrument analysis and simulating human skin were employed to evaluate the heating performance of the prepared heating fabric. The heating cotton fabric exhibits superb visible light absorptivity (∼98.5%), allowing the fabric 36.7 °C higher than that of the normal cotton under one solar irradiance. Meanwhile, the high mid-infrared reflectivity (∼61.0%) endows the fabric with exceptional radiative heating performance for human body. The high conductivity ensures the terrific electric heating ability (∼74 °C at 0.7 V) of the fabric. Fortunately, the fabric also possesses excellent electromagnetic interference shielding (∼60 dB), breathability, flexibility, self-cleaning performance, and antibacterial capacity. The findings in this work open a promising direction on how to convert waste fabrics into high value-added products and develop efficacious advanced heating textile, which is benefit for realizing the ideal personal thermal management and mitigating global climate change.