For those of you who know about my notoriously poor memory for names and such, the following short tale will seem like a fabrication, but I assure you it’s not. Actually, the tale itself isn’t so remarkable, but that I remember full details from one day when I was about 10 years old –– now that’s the amazing part!
While at summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, our group took a trip to nearby Tanglewood, the home of a popular annual summer
music festival and an equally renowned jazz festival. On this day, famed conductor Leonard Bernstein, my namesake, was leading a spirited rehearsal. He was giving his troops plenty of not-so-gentle criticism. I remember that. I also remember that I was wearing a blue, striped suit, and when I opened a carton of milk it sprayed all over me. This was not good for my image or the suit.
This kind of beverage explosion has never happened to me since, but through the years, I have been known to inflict stains on a variety of shirts and jackets. And so it is with a great deal of pleasure that I now can report to you a breakthrough in the never-ending war on discolored apparel
Imagine jeans, sweats or socks that clean and de-odorize themselves when hung on a clothesline in the sun or draped on a balcony railing. Scientists are reporting development of a new cotton fabric that does clean itself of stains and bacteria when exposed to ordinary sunlight. Their report appears in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Mingce Long and Deyong Wu say their fabric uses a coating made from a compound of titanium dioxide, the white material used in everything from white paint to foods to sunscreen lotions. Titanium dioxide breaks down dirt and kills microbes when exposed to some types of light. It already has found uses in self-cleaning windows, kitchen and bathroom tiles, odor-free socks and other products.
Self-cleaning cotton fabrics have been made in the past, the authors note, but they self-clean thoroughly only when exposed to ultraviolet rays. So they set out to develop a new cotton fabric that cleans itself when exposed to ordinary sunlight.
Their report describes cotton fabric coated with nanoparticles made from a compound of titanium dioxide and nitrogen. They show that fabric coated with the material removes an orange dye stain when exposed to sunlight. Further dispersing nanoparticles composed of silver and iodine accelerates the discoloration process. The coating remains intact after washing and drying.
Image: iStock
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