Smart textile coating detoxifies gases

Discovered by researchers at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, the durable coating responds to the presence of toxic gases such as nitric oxide and hydrogen sulphide by converting them into less toxic substances which then become trapped within the fabric. According to the Dartmouth team, the coating could be used as a sensor on protective clothing or as a filter in a hostile environment. The work is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

“This new method of deposition means that the electronic textiles could potentially interface with a broader range of systems because they’re so robust,” said corresponding author Katherine Mirica, an associate professor of chemistry at Dartmouth. “This technological advance paves the way for other applications of the framework’s combined filtration and sensing abilities that could be valuable in biomedical settings and environmental remediation.”

Based on a simple coating known as SOFT (Self-Organized Framework on Textiles) first developed by Mirica and colleagues in 2017, the latest work saw the team precisely embed the framework into fabrics using a copper precursor. This allowed them to create specific patterns and more effectively fill in the tiny gaps and holes between threads.

It was found that the metal-organic technology effectively converted nitric oxide into nitrite and nitrate, with hydrogen sulphide converted into copper sulphide. The framework’s ability to capture and convert toxic materials withstood wear and tear, as well as standard washing.  According to the Dartmouth team, the technology could also eventually be used as a low-cost alternative to technologies that are cost prohibitive, require an energy source, or depend on rare metals, such as catalytic converters.

“Here we’re relying on an Earth-abundant matter to detoxify toxic chemicals, and we’re doing it without any input of outside energy, so we don’t need high temperature or electric current to achieve that function,” Mirica said.

Future work will focus on developing new multifunctional framework materials and scaling up the process of embedding the metal-organic coatings into fabric, according to Mirica.