Engineers at US' UMass create new fabric modelled on polar bear fur

Scientists have long been fascinated by how polar bears can survive in temperatures as low as minus 50 Fahrenheit. One of the key features that helps them stay warm is their fur, which is highly effective at transmitting solar radiation towards their skin. The bears' black skin is also important, as it absorbs the light and heats up efficiently.

The engineers at UMass Amherst have replicated this effect by creating a bilayer fabric that conducts visible light down to a nylon layer coated with a dark material called Pedot. This material warms efficiently, allowing the jacket to keep the wearer comfortable at temperatures 10 degrees Celsius colder than a cotton jacket would be able to handle, as long as the sun is shining or the room is well-lit, UMass Amherst said in a press release.

“But the fur is only half the equation,” said Trisha L Andrew, the paper’s senior author and associate professor of chemistry and adjunct in chemical engineering at UMass Amherst. “The other half is the polar bears’ black skin.”

The fabric works like a natural fibre optic, conducting sunlight down to the skin and preventing the now-warmed skin from radiating out all that hard-won warmth. The fabric is so effective that a jacket made from it is 30 per cent lighter than a cotton jacket of the same warmth, as per Andrew.

The research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, is already being applied, and Soliyarn, a smart-textile innovation company, has begun production of the Pedot-coated cloth.

“Space heating consumes huge amounts of energy that is mostly fossil fuel-derived,” said Wesley Viola, the paper’s lead author, who completed his PhD in chemical engineering at UMass and is now at Andrew’s startup, Soliyarn, LLC. “While our textile really shines as outerwear on sunny days, the light-heat trapping structure works efficiently enough to imagine using existing indoor lighting to directly heat the body. By focusing energy resources on the ‘personal climate’ around the body, this approach could be far more sustainable than the status quo.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DP)