Clothes That Clean Themselves

Hey, how often have we seen this science fiction device used? The most recent that I can recall is Benjamin Rosenbaum's story Start The Clock, which had one of the characters wiping their nose on the sleeve of a coat and the fabric "eating" the residue. I daresay that it is a fairly common and widely used device. One that might come to be sooner than we thought.


Researchers at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia, have found a way to coat fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break down food and dirt in sunlight. (Researchers) coat the fibers with a thin, invisible layer of titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Titanium dioxide, which is used in sunscreens, toothpaste, and paint, is a strong photocatalyst: in the presence of ultraviolet light and water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose, organic matter. However...these nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and are harmless to skin. Plus the nanocrystals do not change the look or feel of the fabric. Even more exciting is the finding that titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell walls of the microorganisms. This should make self-cleaning fabrics especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings.

More in Technology Review

photo American Chemical Society

Thread-forming virus may become nano-silkworms.

There may shortly come commercially available fabrics composed utterly of genetically engineered viruses tricked into organizing themselves into vast columns. With enormous applications for microelectronics, too. (Thanks Shaun Saunders for the heads up on this ).

The viruses are gene-tweaked into binding with selecting inorganic, metallic and organic materials, and into queueing up into great aligned crystalline threads-- strong enough to weave into fabric and to use in nanoelectronics.

In her paper "Ordering of Quantum Dots Using Genetically Engineered Viruses" Dr. Angela Belcher, professor of materials science and biological engineering at MIT, describes how she learned to spin viruses into fibers. She predicts thread batteries and other weavable electronic devices of all kinds coming on line in the future. "It's not really analogous to anything that's done now," she says in Tehnology Review . "It's about giving totally new kinds of functionalities to fibers."

Note however, that the viri are not 'killed' as part of this process. The threads and fabrics to be spun with these threads will be made up of untold billions of 'living' viruses, suspended in their crystal matrix. Perhaps great tapestries of this material will serve as homes for a completely artificial yet still gene-powered intelligence.