Indian-origin researcher among team that developed technology.
By Dileep Thekkethil
Soon people can save money spent on laundry and washing machines as a team of researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have developed new technology that makes clothes clean itself within six minutes when exposed to light bulb or sunlight.
The new alternate for cleaning clothes is developed by a group of researchers at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The researchers have developed cheap and efficient special nanostructures that can clean organic matter in textile when exposed to light.
Rajesh Ramanathan, the Indian-origin researcher who is part of the team that developed the nanostructured textile said: “There’s more work to do to before we can start throwing out our washing machines, but this advance lays a strong foundation for the future development of fully self-cleaning textiles.â€
The research paper was published in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.
The new nano-activated textiles can clean the stains in clothes without you having to send it to the laundry for a dry wash. All one has to do is to get clothes outside and put it under the sun for some time to get it cleaned.
Ramanathan said that in the development phase the team had a variety of applications for catalysis-based industries, such as agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and natural products, and could be easily scaled up to industrial levels.
“The advantage of textiles is they already have a 3D structure so they are great at absorbing light, which in turn speeds up the process of degrading organic matter,” he explained.
Due to the ability of copper and silver to absorb visible light, the researcher used the nanostructures based on these two elements for their research.
According to the research paper, when the clothes equipped with nanostructures are exposed to light they receive an energy boost which create “hot electronsâ€.
These hot electrons release high energy that activates nanostructures that can degrade the organic matters such as stains within minutes.
Now, one of the daunting questions that trouble the researchers is how to bring the new cleaning method out from the lab and use it in large-scale textile production. To achieve this, the researchers will have to find a way to develop the nanostructures on an industrial scale.
The research team currently activates nanostructures in clothes by dipping them in a few solutions resulting in the development of stable nanostructures within 30 minutes. During the testing phase, the clothes with nanostructures cleaned themselves after getting exposed to light for about six minutes.
“Our next step will be to test our nano-enhanced textiles with organic compounds that could be more relevant to consumers, to see how quickly they can handle common stains like tomato sauce or wine,” Ramanathan said.
2 Comments
Too complicated! It only works on fabrics treated with copper and silver? What if the fabrics aren’t nice enough. Why don’t they direct their research toward developing a spray spot remover of silver and copper? Spray it on…sit it in the sun for awhile and “voila!” Stain is gone!
This I would buy…and so would a lot of other people who aren’t going to waste their time tracking down clothes made in a special fabric.
This is good thing but how’s that possible i don’t get it