A Janus membrane doped with carbon nanotubes for wet–thermal management

Abstract

In a human skin–fibrous fabric–external environment, fibrous materials, as the “second skin” of the human body, provide comfort against the wet and heat effectively. Fibrous materials protect human health and guarantee work efficiency in various outdoor or inner scenes. Personal wet–thermal management based on fibrous materials can regulate comfort in a facile manner with low or zero energy consumption, which has become a potential development area. However, realizing synergistic management of the wet and heat effectively and conveniently is a challenge in the development and production of fibrous materials. We designed and fabricated a Janus fibrous membrane composed of 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (TMSPMA)-modified hydrophobic cotton gauze and electrospun carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-doped cellulose acetate (CA) hydrophilic fibrous membrane. Taking advantage of asymmetric wettability along its thickness direction, the Janus fibrous membrane, acting as a “liquid diode”, could transport sweat/moisture from human skin to the external environment unidirectionally, which endowed a dry surface on human skin, avoiding “stickiness”, and realizing wet management. Doped CNTs had good photothermal-conversion capacity, so the Janus membrane exhibited excellent heating capacity for passive radiation, so excellent synergistic wet–thermal management was obtained. The Janus membrane could be a candidate for diverse applications of fibrous membranes. Our data provide new ideas for the design and fabrication of fibrous membranes with remarkable wet–thermal management.