Multifunctional sandwich-structured super-hygroscopic zinc-based MOF-overlayed cooling wearables for special personal thermal management

• Main Authors: Li, Wulong, Zhang, Yaoxin, Guo, Shuai, Yu, Zhen, Kang, Jialiang, Li, Zhanxiong, Wei, Lei, Tan, Swee Ching
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Moisture absorption film; Multifunctional
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174698
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Personal protective equipment pays attention exclusively to external safety protection and ignores the internal thermoregulation of physiological state in association with sweating. Herein, a super-hygroscopic calcium-doped poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) and superhydrophobic metal-organic-framework-overlayed wearables (Ca-PSS/MOF) integrated cooling wearable is proposed for special personal thermal management (PTM). Compared to the pristine fabric, the superhydrophobic MOF wearables exhibit anti-fouling and antibacterial capabilities, and the antibacterial efficiency is up to 99.99% and 98.99% against E. coli and S. aureus, respectively. More importantly, Ca-PSS/MOF demonstrate significant heat index changes up to 25.5 °C by reducing relative humidity dramatically from 91.0% to 60.0% and temperature from 36.5 to 31.6 °C during the running test. The practical feasibility of the Ca-PSS/MOF cooling wearables is well proved with the protective suit of the fireman. Owing to these multifunctional merits, the sandwich-structured cooling Ca-PSS/MOF are expected to provide new insights for designing the next-generation multifunctional apparel for PTM.