Large-Scale Preparation of Micro–Nanofibrous and Fluffy Propylene-Based Elastomer/Polyurethane@Graphene Nanoplatelet Membranes with Breathable and Flexible Characteristics for Wearable Stretchy Heaters

Abstract

Effective personal thermal management is crucial for protecting human health during cold weather. Therefore, wearable heaters based on electric-heating membranes are one of the most promising devices to become essential appliances in our daily lives. The main challenge toward this goal is the development of electricheating membranes with adequate breathable, flexible, and stretchable characteristics. In the work presented here, micro− nanofibrous fluffy electric-heating membranes were prepared by coating polyurethane/graphene nanoplatelet (PU@GNP) films onto melt-blown propylene-based elastomer (PBE) micro−nanofibrous membranes via a facile, cheap, and large-scale method consisting of a coating-compressing cyclic process. Investigation of the resulting PBE/PU@GNP membranes showed that the PU@ GNP films were uniformly deposited onto the PBE micro−nanofiber surfaces, forming fluffy interconnected conducting channels. By applying a voltage of 36 V to the prepared PBE/PU@GNP membranes, the temperature increased to 69.7 °C, confirming excellent electric-heating features. Moreover, the porosity of the fabricated membrane could be tailored readily by adjusting the coatingcompressing cycles. Benefiting from the conducting channels, the PBE/PU@GNP membranes exhibited efficiently regulated air permeability ranging from 212 to 60.2 mm/s, a prominent softness score of 53.8, and an excellent elastic recovery rate of 85.5%. These findings demonstrate that PBE/PU@GNP micro−nanofibrous fluffy membranes may well be suitable for application in electric-heating clothing. The cyclic coating-compressing preparation process may be attractive in industrial manufacturing.

Scalable, Waterproof, Breathable, and Flexible Polyolefin-Elastomer/Polyethylene Glycol@Zinc Oxide Microfibrous Fabrics for Daytime Radiative Cooling Clothing

“…Thus, the softness, mechanical, and elastic performance of the PP/POE@ZnO microfibrous fabrics were tested. As shown in Figure a, the benefit of the addition of POE is that all the softness scores of the samples with different ZnO mass ratios were greater than 75 and higher than the score (about 15) of pure PP melt-blown fabric. This indicates that the prepared PP/POE@ZnO microfibrous fabrics are soft enough to meet the comfort requirements of clothing.…”

“…The structure characteristic parameters of the fiber orientation angle distribution (Figure S5) and fiber diameter distribution of the prepared PP/POE@ZnO microfibrous fabrics with different ZnO mass ratios are displayed in Figure 2d,e. In this work, benefiting from the separation effect of PEG and the phase separation of blends, 26 the fiber diameter was concentrated in the range of 1−18 μm, and there are two peaks around 2.5 and 10 μm, respectively. This attractive binary fiber diameter distribution is beneficial for enhancing softness while maintaining mechanical performance (Figure S6).…”

Comfortable, Anisotropic-Elastic, and Multilayered Fibrous Bandages with Enhanced Directional Tensile Performance

“…Generally, there are two main strategies employed for constructing elastic nonwovens. In the first strategy, elastic nonwovens are directly produced through spun bonding or melt blowing processes, utilizing the raw materials comprising elastic polymers such as polyolefin–elastomer (POE), polyurethane, or ethylene–vinyl acetate copolymers . Elastic nonwovens produced by this strategy inherently maintain the original elastic properties of the polymer.…”

Tri‐Layered Bicomponent Microfilament Composite Fabric for Highly Efficient Cold Protection

“…So far, a variety of preparation strategies, including directspinning, [27] electrospinning, [17,28,29] melt blowing, [30][31][32][33] and splittable bicomponent spun bonding-hydroentangling [34] have been employed to develop the microfiber fabrics. The high cost of production limits the viability of the direct-spinning process.…”