Nanotechnology revolution to sweep Indian textiles

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

• Discount UK Shopping

Related Articles

Bt brinjal is safe: ChavanImport of fodder seeds likely: PawarPolicy vacuum, supplies behind vegetable inflationIndia deposits rice, wheat seeds in Svalbard Vault

Mumbai, May 22: India is set to witness another revolution in the textile industry in the next few years. After the success of Technology Upgradation Fund (TUF), nanotechnology will be another trigger for the industry to look forward to.

Using nanotechnology, fabrics can be altered at the molecular level, creating advance materials that can be 100 times lighter in weight! Nanotechnology fabrics can also be 100 times stronger. Objects made from these materials could be up to 100 times lighter, using one-hundredth amount of material. As a result, ultralight cars, trucks, trains, and planes will use far less energy, especially with atomically smooth surfaces to reduce internal friction and air resistance losses.

According to UK-based Cientifica, a company into disseminating information on converting nanotechnology into commercial applications states that industrial fabrics and textiles in general, will enjoy similar gains in performance.

“Today, basic units of fabrics are molecules of natural and synthetic materials such as cotton (cellulose), wool (alpha-keratins), rayon (cellulose), polyester, and so forth. The molecules are tangled together in various ways to form fibers, which in turn can be spun into yarns,”Tim Harper, CEO, Cientifica explained. Mr Harper was in India last week to announce its tie-up with Yash Management & Satellite Ltd. to consider setting up nano-products manufacturing project.

However, at the molecular level, the strength and toughness of a fabric could be improved by reinforcing the fiber with carbyne molecules. Carbyne is a linear chain of carbon atoms with alternating single and triple bonds.

Although carbyne has been known for some time, only within the past year have researchers successfully stabilised the molecule in long (300-500 atoms) chains by capping the ends with trifluoromethyl and nitrile radicals.

With molecular manufacturing, arbitrarily long chains will be possible. Carbyne is extremely strong in tension compared to commercial rayon and nylon.

A carbyne molecule could be cross-linked to other carbyne molecules using the same sorts of structures that Drexler designed for gate knobs in the mechanical nanocomputer. The strength and stiffness of the resulting array could be adjusted by varying the number, length, and geometry of the cross-links. Carbyne fibers made of non-cross-linked molecular arrays would have an extraordinary degree of toughness since cracks would not propagate from one molecule to the next.