This Cloth Will Literally Make You ’Cool’: Stanford Engineers Develop Fabric That Cools The Skin

A team of Stanford engineers led by Yi Cui have developed a plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than any other fabric we wear today. In a study published today in Science, the team turned a battery component into a textile that lets our body's natural heat escape better than cotton.

The team hasn't worn the fabric themselves yet, but Cui insists it feels "very much like normal fabric". Describing their work in Science, the researchers suggest that this new family of fabrics could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.

"If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy," said Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

How does it work?

Blending nanotechnology, photonics and chemistry to allow the body to discharge heat more rapidly than traditional textiles, the new fabric would make the wearer about 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, according to a statement on the Stanford website.

The material cools by letting perspiration evaporate through the material, something ordinary fabrics already do. But the Stanford material provides a second, revolutionary cooling mechanism: allowing heat that the body emits as infrared radiation to pass through the plastic textile. It allows thermal radiation, air and water vapor to pass right through and it is opaque to visible light, states a report by International Business Times.

"Forty to 60 percent of our body heat is dissipated as infrared radiation when we are sitting in an office," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering who specializes in photonics, which is the study of visible and invisible light. "But until now there has been little or no research on designing the thermal radiation characteristics of textiles."

"Wearing anything traps some heat and makes the skin warmer," Fan said. "If dissipating thermal radiation were our only concern, then it would be best to wear nothing."

The comparison showed that the cotton fabric made the skin surface 3.6 F warmer than their cooling textile, reports The Verge. The researchers said that this difference means that a person dressed in their new material might feel less inclined to turn on a fan portable air conditioner - see on Gear Hungry .

The researchers are continuing their work on several fronts, including adding more colors, textures and cloth-like characteristics to their material. Adapting a material already mass produced for the battery industry could make it easier to create products.