Recently, the team led by Academician Xu Weilin from the National Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing Technology at Wuhan Textile University published a research paper titled Sweat Gland-Like Fabric for Personal Thermal-Wet Comfort Management in the internationally renowned materials journal Advanced Functional Materials. This work proposes a sweat gland-like (Sg-like) fabric aimed at significantly enhancing personal thermal-wet comfort. Through unique design, the fabric effectively guides sweat to evaporate quickly when the body perspires, thereby lowering skin temperature and providing a more comfortable wearing experience. The National Key Laboratory at Wuhan Textile University is the first author affiliation and corresponding institution of the paper. Associate Professor Zhang Qian of the National Key Laboratory is the first author, with 2022 master's student Wang Manyu and 2021 master's student Chen Tao as co-first authors. Academician Xu Weilin is the corresponding author, and Professor Li Li from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Associate Professor Zhu Bin from Nanjing University are co-corresponding authors.
The sweat evaporation strategy has shown great potential for passive cooling of the human body. However, the accumulation of sweat at the skin resulting from the hindrance by traditional fabrics increases the heat load and causes the clothing to stick to the skin. Sweat evaporation cooling textiles that perform the sweat-wicking function of sweat glands are thus highly desirable. Here, a sweat gland-like (Sg-like) fabric is proposed for personal thermal-wet comfort management. The Sg-like channels formed in the fabric through spraying and ultrasonic welding processes can pull liquid water from the skin and spread it out over the outer layer of the fabric for rapid evaporation. The Sg-like design principle is also well-validated based on colored fabrics. In artificial sweating skin demonstrations, the temperature of skin covered with the Sg-like fabric is comparable to that of bare skin and lower than that of skin covered with commercial textiles. In human body tests, a temperature reduction of ≈2 °C is observed in sweating for skin coated with the Sg-like fabric compare with skin-coated cotton. It is expected this work offers promising guidelines for developing a sweat-evaporation cooling textile to meet the thermal-wet comfort requirements of the human body.
