Green, pliable Janus fabrics with efficient liquid management via a needle punching, hydroentangling and wetting gradient

Abstract

Janus fabrics with asymmetric wettability enable guiding liquid unidirectional transport and rapid drying, showing great potential in sportswear and functional wearable textiles. However, most reported Janus fabrics suffer from insufficient flexibility and low mechanical strength. Herein, we propose a green and scalable strategy to fabricate pliable Janus fabrics by integrating a wetting-gradient design with a combined needle punching–hydroentangling process. An elastic polyolefin elastomer/polypropylene (POE/PP) filament web was integrated with a hydrophilic Lyocell fibrous web via needle punching, which drove the through-thickness embedding of Lyocell fibers to form directional water-transfer channels, followed by hydroentangling to enhance fiber entanglement and structural uniformity—all achieved without chemical modification. The resulting Janus fabrics combined enhanced mechanical strength (tensile breaking strength up to 104.6 N in the machine direction), durable elasticity (elastic recovery rate around 60% with max stress 78.6 N in the machine direction at 100% fixed strain), and favorable softness (softness score 0.200 and softness force 0.16 N in the cross-direction). The relative accumulative one-way transport capacity (AOTC) increased to 1652.1%, accompanied by an improved drying rate of 1.62 mL h⁻¹. Moreover, the fabrics maintained excellent structural integrity and moisture management performance after 20 washing cycles. This work presents a green and scalable strategy for producing elastic Janus fabrics that integrate efficient liquid management with durable comfort, highlighting their potential for advanced quick-drying apparel and next-generation smart textiles.