Clean Clothes Without Washed

The good news for people who are lazy to wash clothes. Recently researchers at the University of Shanghai and Hubei in China the latest research in helping people who are lazy in matters of washing clothes.

As has been reported by the BBC, the latest findings from China is published in the latest issue of the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces. Experts from China has created an additional layer (coating) that can make us do not need to wash more clothes, just dried it.

According to researchers Mingce Long and Deyong Wu, who developed the material, exposing their fabric to sunlight causes it to not only clean itself of stains, it also causes it to kill off odor-causing bacteria.

The secret is a naturally occurring form of titanium called titanium dioxide (TiO2). TiO2 is often used as a dye on account of its bright white pigmentation (you'll find it in everything from paint to milk), but it's also used in industry for its photocatalytic properties. A photocatalyst is something that accelerates a chemical reaction in the presence of light. And it just so happens that when TiO2 is exposed to light, it breaks down dirt and wipes out odor-causing microbes.

The thing is, we've known about TiO2's photocatalytic properties since the sixties. We've used it to make self-cleaning tile and glass. We've even used it to make self-cleaning fabrics before; truth be told, the self-cleaning properties of Long and Wu's fabric, in and of itself, aren't terribly revolutionary. So what makes this fabric so special?

Simply put, Long and Wu's fabric is more versatile. For decades, TiO2 was only known to exhibit photocatalytic properties in the presence of ultraviolet light. But recently, it was shown that spiking TiO2 with nitrogen ions gives it photocatalytic capabilities in UV light and visible light. By coating their fabric with nano particles made from this new N-TiO2, the researchers have created a fabric that self-cleans in the presence of a very broad spectrum of light. What's more, they found that further dispersing additional silver iodide nanoparticles in the fabric accelerated the N-TiO2's stain-fighting properties.

The use of these chemicals have been applied to a variety of household items such as windows that can clean themselves without human help, socks without odor, even tiles for the kitchen and bathroom that always looks clean.

However, the invention is not separated from the constraints, among them the system works should be dried in the sun, makes it less practical when used in everyday life, especially when weather conditions are overcast. *** [ID | BBC | IO9.COM | PIKIRAN RAKYAT 22122011]

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