Chinese experts have developed a new type of silk textile that reflects 95% of sunlight and hardly absorbs ultraviolet rays.
Clothing made from this material can reduce body temperature by 4.3°C more than ordinary silk fabrics during intense heat.
This was reported in an article published in the journal "Nature Sustainability", as reported by Oxu.Az.
Researchers note: "Global warming is driving us to create new textile materials that help endure daytime heat more easily.
Natural silk fabrics are not fully suitable for this purpose because they do not reflect sunlight enough and absorb ultraviolet rays.
We have developed a new nanotextile consisting of 'woven' silk nanofibers that overcomes these shortcomings".
A team of scientists led by Professor Zhang Yining from Tsinghua University in Beijing fundamentally changed the optical properties of silk using a special weaving strategy.
The scientists developed an approach that allows ordinary silk threads to be 'woven' with a set of nanothreads arranged in the shape of a Fermat spiral.
In mathematics, the Fermat spiral represents a special curve that mimics the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower.
The spiral's loop sizes and the distance between them are chosen so that 'nano-silk' actively reflects visible sunlight and absorbs ultraviolet rays significantly less than ordinary silk.
At the same time, this material conducts heat as well as ordinary silk, and is not inferior to traditional silk in terms of water resistance and mechanical strength.
