Electroluminescent fibers, owing to their miniaturized geometry and intrinsic conformability to the soft, dynamically deforming human body, are emerging as pivotal components for next-generation smart textiles, wearable displays, and human–machine interaction systems. However, it remains highly challenging to develop electroluminescent fibers that simultaneously achieve ultrahigh stretchability, mechanical robustness, deformation-tolerant light emission, and human-interactive responsiveness, which are essential for reliable operation under complex human motions and diverse wearable interactive scenarios. Herein, we develop mechanically robust ionic conductive fibers through wet spinning of the polyurethane/ionic liquid system, enabling deformation-tolerant alternating current electroluminescence (ACEL) and contact-triggered luminescent responsiveness for wearable electronics. The interconnected ion-conductive network within the elastomeric polymer matrix accommodates dramatic polymer-chain deformation during stretching while sustaining continuous ion migration, thereby ensuring stable electroluminescent output under large strains. The resulting ionic conductive fibers exhibit ultrahigh stretchability up to 500

The spatial and temporal control of material properties at a distance has yielded many unique innovations including photo-patterning, 3D-printing, and architected material design. To date, most of these innovations have relied on light, heat, sound, or electric current as stimuli for controlling the material properties. Here, we demonstrate that an electric field can induce chemical reactions and subsequent polymerization in composites via piezoelectrically-mediated transduction. The response to an electric field rather than through direct contact with an electrode is mediated by a nanoparticle transducer, i.e., piezoelectric ZnO, which mediates reactions between thiol and alkene monomers, resulting in tunable moduli as a function of voltage, time, and the frequency of the applied AC power. The reactivity of the mixture and the modulus of a naïve material containing these elements can be programmed based on the distribution of the electric field strength. This programmability results in multi-stiffness gels. Additionally, the system can be adjusted for the formation of an electro-adhesive. This simple and generalizable design opens avenues for facile application in adaptive damping and variable-rigidity materials, adhesive, soft robotics, and potentially tissue engineering.

Polymer composites combine two or more materials' properties into a single material with properties superior to their constituents. Currently, the fabrication of polymer composite preparation is energy-demanding and often requires a longer processing time. To address this challenge, polymer composites are prepared via electric-field-assisted room-temperature curing of thiol-ene monomers facilitated by the inverse piezoelectric effect of ZnO particles. The result is composite fabrication at a low AC electric field of similar to 0.1-0.6 kV cm-1 in 30 min. The piezoelectric ZnO rods grown/deposited on fiberglass fabric convert thiol into thiyl radicals when activated under an electric field, initiating polymerization and facilitating the polymer composite. The polymer composites are also prepared using commercial ZnO nanoparticles with fiberglass and cotton fabrics. Further, the method's potential to prepare polymer composites for direct practical applications is demonstrated by preparing corrugated, laminated, and large-area fiberglass fabric composites. Thus, the scalable electric field-assisted polymer composite preparation method could be used with various substrates to prepare a variety of polymer composites with meager energy demands. With an energy consumption of 70.8 nJ cm-3, this is among the least energy-intensive methods of rapid composite preparation. This energy- and time-efficient polymer composite preparation method could improve sustainability and has potential for technological adaptation.

The spatial and temporal control of material properties at a distance has yielded many unique innovations including photo-patterning, 3D-printing, and architected material design. To date, most of these innovations have relied on light, heat, sound, or electric current as stimuli for controlling the material properties. Here, we demonstrate that an electric field can induce chemical reactions and subsequent polymerization in composites via piezoelectrically-mediated transduction. The response to an electric field rather than through direct contact with an electrode is mediated by a nanoparticle transducer, i.e., piezoelectric ZnO, which mediates reactions between thiol and alkene monomers, resulting in tunable moduli as a function of voltage, time, and the frequency of the applied AC power. The reactivity of the mixture and the modulus of a naïve material containing these elements can be programmed based on the distribution of the electric field strength. This programmability results in multi-stiffness gels. Additionally, the system can be adjusted for the formation of an electro-adhesive. This simple and generalizable design opens new avenues for facile application in adaptive damping and variable-rigidity materials, adhesive, soft robotics, and potentially tissue engineering.

Passive radiative thermal management holds substantial potential for enhancing energy efficiency and sustainability. However, few research efforts have addressed the integration of mechanical robustness and durability with the distribution and composition of photonic structures within materials. Silk fibers, known for their distinctive hierarchical morphological structure, offer a solution to these challenges by providing exceptional optical and mechanical properties. Inspired by this, we developed a silk-like tough metafiber (PMABF) that incorporated multiple scatterers through a multi-scale structural construction of nanofiber aggregates and molecular interface engineering. We show that fabrics woven with PMABF can provide high mid-infrared (MIR) emissivity (98.6

Cationic modification of cotton fabrics stands as a promising strategy for achieving sustainable production with superior dyeing performance. However, the low utilization of chemical reagents and poor production efficiency in the cationization process trigger its multiple environmental pollution in the late-stage dyeing industry. Herein, we develop an efficient, clean and low-cost cationic modification method of cotton fabrics, which could greatly reduce both the chemical usage (3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyltrimethyl ammonium chloride ((CHPTAC) and NaOH) and overall treatment costs compared to the conventional approaches. The modification is designed to achieve an efficient and competitive cationization effect through a facile one-bath pad-bake process. Under the pressure of the rolls, CHPTAC with low molecular weight diffuses rapidly and flexibly, ensuring even distribution within the fiber for comprehensive cationization. Notably, the as-prepared cationic cotton exhibits higher color depth with only half the dye utilization in traditional methods. Implementing the proposed one-bath pad-bake cationic process results in reductions of 8.3

Enzymatic antifelting finishing, as an eco-alternative for conventional chlorination, has attracted increasing attention in wool processing. Nevertheless, proteases are often subject to the disadvantage of significant fiber damage, which is mainly due to the hydrolysis of low-crystallinity cell membrane complexes rather than wool scales. Herein, a full enzymatic subtraction-addition approach was applied to the antifelting finishing of wool textiles, that is, the enzymatic hydrolysis of the highly cross-linked wool scales was carried out by using the hydrolases of keratinase and protease, and then, a glutamine-modified epsilon-poly-l-lysine (mPLL) was grafted to wool fibers under the catalysis of transglutaminase for enhancing the antifelting effect. According to the test standard of IWS-31, the shrinkage rate of the obtained wool fabric was reduced to 2.98%, and the strength loss was less than 10%, accompanied with encouraging antibacterial activities against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, both reaching 100% of antibacterial rates after contact with the bacteria. Meanwhile, low-temperature dyeing can be achieved by enzymatically reducing the density of wool scales, and the mPLL network formed on the wool surface ensures a satisfactory colorfastness to washing and rubbing up to level 4.5. The present enzymatic subtraction-addition technique provides a green route for the functionalization of wool textiles.

The environmental benefits of utilizing protease as a biocatalyst for wool shrink-resist finishing have been widely recognized. However, the efficacy of individual protease treatment is unsatisfactory due to its incapability towards the outermost cuticle layer of wool fibers that contains hydrophobic fatty acids. In order to weaken the structural integrity of the highly cross-linked scales and promote the enzymatic anti-felting, sodium sulfite and tris (2-carboxyethyl) phosphine hydrochloride (TCEP) were employed in combination with papain, respectively, aiming at obtaining a low shrinkage without unacceptable fiber damages. Based on the synergistic effect of papain and TCEP, the edges of wool scales were slightly destroyed by the reduction of disulfide bonds, accompanied by enzymatic hydrolysis of the keratin component. Through the controlled reduction and hydrolysis of wool scales, satisfactory anti-felting result was achieved without causing severe damage to the fiber interiors. In the presence of 0.25 g/L TCEP and 25 U/mL papain, the area shrinkage of wool fabric decreased to approximately 6 %, with a low strength loss of less than 8 %. Meanwhile, the dyeing behavior of the wool fabric under low-temperature conditions was dramatically improved, leading to decreased energy consumption during production. The present work provides an alternative for eco-friendly finishing of wool fabrics, which can be applied commercially.

In order to address the requirements for warmth and energy conservation in cold climates, the development of personal thermal management textiles that regulate local human thermal comfort has emerged as a promising solution in recent times. Nevertheless, existing warming textile strategies often rely on a singular energy source, exhibit inadequate air/moisture permeability, and lack adaptability to dynamic and intricate climate variations. Herein, a novel multienergy-coupled radiative warming Janus textile has been effectively designed and fabricated via screen printing and foam finishing. Taking advantage of the synergistic effects of directional water transport capability of polyester-covered cotton (with a directional water-transport index of R = 577.5%), high mid-infrared radiant reflection (at 60%), electrothermal conversion of copper coating (with a sheet resistance of 0.01 Ω sq-1), and strong solar absorption of the nanoporous structure TA@APTES@Fe(III)@CNT (TAFC) coating (at 98.5%), the Janus fabric exhibits exceptional performance in expelling out one-way sweat/moisture (R = 329.3%) and solar heating (86.9 °C)/Joule heating (226.4 °C at 3.0 V)/heat retention (2.4 °C higher than that of cotton fabric). Furthermore, the fabric is also provided with exceptional mechanical, washing, flame-retardant, and antibacterial performance. This research holds the potential to revolutionize the development and production of warming textiles by incorporating desirable sweat/moisture permeability and multienergy-coupled heating.

In this work, we report on a novel membrane design with both photocatalysis and electrocatalysis for simultaneous oil/water separation and dye adsorption/degradation to treat oily wastewater from textile dyeing and finishing. The membrane (designated as PAN-CF/MWCNT/FeOOH) comprised a cotton fabric (CF) dopped with carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and FeOOH and a microporous polyacrylonitrile (PAN) top layer. Under a flowthrough dynamic filtration mode, the membrane allowed for separation of oil-in-water emulsions by the PAN layer via wettability sieving and coalescence demulsification, while hydrosoluble dyes were captured and degraded by the CF/MWCNT/FeOOH via adsorption and in situ electro-degradation. The kinetics of adsorptive capture and electro-induced degradation of hydrosoluble dyes on the PAN-CF/MWCNT/FeOOH membrane was determined, which confirmed that the flux decline during flow-through filtration caused by the accumulated foulant in the membrane was alleviated effectively. A flow-through filtration test with methylene blue (MB) dyed petroleum ether-in-water emulsion showed that a high removal rate of oil (99.9 %) and dyes (97.6 %) was achieved simultaneously in a single pass at a high water permeability (17.2 m3/m2.h.bar) under an operating pressure of 6.5 kPa and a DC current of 10 mA. In addition, the fouled membrane could be cleaned easily via photo-Fenton degradation under light irradiation. This novel approach to the design and fabrication of membranes with multifunctionalities is expected to offer numerous advantages for treating complex oily wastewater from textile processing.

Mineralization is a long-lasting method commonly used by biological materials to selectively strengthen in response to site specific mechanical stress. Achieving a similar form of toughening in synthetic polymer composites remains challenging. In previous work, we developed methods to promote chemical reactions via the piezoelectrochemical effect with mechanical responses of inorganic, ZnO nanoparticles. Herein, we report a distinct example of a mechanically-mediated reaction in which the spherical ZnO nanoparticles react themselves leading to the formation of microrods composed of a Zn/S mineral inside an organogel. The microrods can be used to selectively create mineral deposits within the material resulting in the strengthening of the overall resulting composite.

Screen printing with pigments features its superiority and versatility and has shown promising applications in color-related fields, whereas pigments have clear advantages among colorants owing to their wide color-range, extensive applicability, and green characteristics such as water and energy saving. However, it requires massive, inevitable addition of binders to improve the affinity and dispersity of pigments during printing, which results in undesired rigidity of printed fabrics. Here, we synthesized an anionic poly (styrene-methyl methacrylate-acrylic acid) absorbed Rhodamine B (RB@PSMA) nanosphere via soap-free emulsion polymerization for printing the cotton fabrics without binders. The prepared color nanospheres RB@PSMA show the good size stability (PDI=0.018) and dispersity (< 299.4 nm). Notably, the strong electrostatic attraction from PSMA nanosphere enables the saturated adsorption of Rhodamine B dyes with ionic bonding. The printed fabrics with RB@PSMA were thus endowed with enhanced color performance (X 2.3 in K/S value) and soft hand feel without binders, differing from original RB printed ones that are usually stiff due to the crosslinking-induced rigidity. This approach may carve a practical avenue in binder-free pigment coloring and provide new prospects for the facile and versatile design of other printing and dyeing technology.

The design and preparation of infrared stealth materials that meet the application in complex environments is urgently demanded in military fields. In this paper, composites with low emissivity and thermal insulation are designed to be used for indoor and outdoor infrared stealth. Thereinto, nanoPE-MXene, yttrium oxide coated hollow glass microspheres (HGMs@Y2O3) and polypropylene nonwoven (PPF) were used as low emission, insulation, and antifouling layers, respectively. The sandwich-structured composite reduce the infrared radiation temperature of the 80 degrees C heat source object to 33.9 degrees C, and the average infrared emissivity of 3-15 um is only 0.17. In addition, the infrared stealth performance of the composite is not affected by environmental changes. More importantly, the composite exhibits excellent anti-fouling and ageing resistance performance, which lays the foundation for the practical application of efficient stealth infrared materials.

Special wettability fabrics-based membranes have shown excellent performance in emulsified oil/water separation, however, their application in separating industrial oil-in-water emulsions still remains a great challenge due to the complexity of multifarious surfactant components. In this work, we demonstrate a simple and facile approach to fabricate fabric-based membranes (P(AM-DMC-AA)@CFs) for complex emulsified oil/water (printing and dyeing wastewater) separation with combining the advantage of amphoteric polyacrylamide layer and cotton fabric in a single system. The amphoteric polyacrylamide surface and tortuous fabric channels synergistically provide the membranes with demulsification adjustability for separating emulsified oil in water which stabilized by anionic/cationic surfactants. Meanwhile, the incorporating of amphoteric polyacrylamide into cotton fabrics had remarkable advantages of both flexible and stable superhydrophilic/underwater superoleophobic. Consequently, the obtained P(AM-DMC-AA)@CFs membranes are endowed with robust superhydrophilicity, underwater superoleophobicity and switchable zeta potential, which make it capable of highly efficient separation of oil/water emulsion (anionic: 94.05%, cationic: 96.19%), suspension filtration (kaolin: 89.5%, hematite: 93.1%,) and concurrent dye removal in 5 min (14.3 mg/g). In addition, the prepared membrane is still effective in separating simulated printing and dyeing wastewater containing multiple pollutants. The facile and versatile design of the P(AM-DMC-AA)@CFs membrane offers new prospects for exploiting fabric-based membranes with extraordinary features for industrial oily wastewater treatment.

Conductive materials with superhydrophobicity surfaces emerge a superior application potential in outdoor's equipment deicing field due to their excellent electrothermal heating capacity. However, it is still a challenge to develop robust conductive fabric with self-healing superhydrophobic surface for the application in outdoor harsh environments, especially using environment-friendly raw materials and facile modification methods. In this paper, the durable and washable conductive fabric (S-SHCNF) with desired electrothermal performance was fabricated through the design of healable superhydrophobic micro/nano rough surface. The introduction of nonfluorinated shell-core nanospheres (SiO2 @NH2-PDMS) with self-healing superhydrophobicity improved anti-corrosion and rapid restoration of S-SHCNF. The contact angle of the S-SHCNF could reach 158.2 while the sliding contact angle was 2.7, endowing the materials with excellent anti-corrosion performance. As expected, the superhydrophobicity and conductivity of S-SHNCF kept unchanged when it has been exposed to strong acid, alkali and salt. Meanwhile, the S-SHCNF still maintained superhydrophobicity (151.5) and conductivity (0.96 omega center dot sq(-1)) after 800 cyclic frictions with the self-healing property. Thanks to the electrothermal performance from the Ag conductive dense layer, the S-SHCNF could remove ice thoroughly in 18 s with 5 V voltage. Therefore, the S-SHCNF with excellent durability and anticorrosive performance, could enlarge its application in outdoor deicing application especially in harsh environments.

In nature, bone adapts to mechanical forces it experiences, strengthening itself to match the conditions placed upon it. Here we report a composite material that adapts to the mechanical environment it experiences—varying its modulus as a function of force, time and the frequency of mechanical agitation. Adaptation in the material is managed by mechanically responsive ZnO, which controls a crosslinking reaction between a thiol and an alkene within a polymer composite gel, resulting in a mechanically driven ×66 increase in modulus. As the amount of chemical energy is a function of the mechanical energy input, the material senses and adapts its modulus along the distribution of stress, resembling the bone remodelling behaviour that materials can adapt accordingly to the loading location. Such material design might find use in a wide range of applications, from adhesives to materials that interface with biological systems.

Mechanically adaptive polymers could significantly improve the life-cycle of current materials. Piezo-polymerization is a novel approach that harnesses vibrational mechanical energy through piezoelectric nanoparticles to generate chemical promoters for linear polymerization and cross-linking reactions. However, the available piezo-polymerization systems rely on reactions forming irreversible covalent bonds. Dynamic covalent linkages could impart further adaptability to these polymeric systems. Here we show the first example of the piezoelectrochemical synthesis of disulfide bonds to form organogels from polymers with thiol side groups. We demonstrate that the reaction proceeds via piezo-oxidation of the thiol to disulfide in the presence of ZnO nanoparticles and iodide anions under mechanical agitation. We use mechanical energy in the form of ultrasound (40 kHz) and low frequency vibrations (2 kHz) to synthesize a variety of organogels from common synthetic polymers. Additionally, we show that the polymers in these gels can be chemically recycled with a reducing agent. Finally, we study the thermal and mechanical properties of the composites obtained after drying the gels. We believe this new system adds to the piezo-polymerization repertoire and serves as the basis to fabricate mechanically adaptive polymeric materials via dynamic covalent bonds.

Synthetic polymeric materials with adaptive capabilities triggered by mechanical stimuli could significantly extend their life cycle and boost performance. To achieve this, robust mechanically responsive chemistries must be developed. Piezoelectrically mediated chemistry is an emergent area of interest for this purpose since environmental mechanical energy can be harvested and directly converted to chemical energy. This Viewpoint summarizes state-of-the-art knowledge about mechanochemical reactions mediated by the piezoelectrochemical effect, provides mechanistic insight on reactivity, and describes its application for conducting polymerization and cross-linking reactions. In addition, it highlights current challenges with regard to expanding the chemical repertoire and the transition of such methods to solid matrices.