LAUSR

Conventional use of textiles as substrates for incorporation of brick materials (i.e. polymers and nanomaterials) is ubiquitously developed with primary purposes for introducing desired technical/functional performance rather than maintaining the aesthetic/decorative characteristics and inherent advantages (i.e. flexibility and permeability) of textiles. Such kind of modified textiles with typical solid coating layers, however, is becoming more and more unsuitable for some emerging applications, such as smart wearables. Herein we presented a brand-new kind of modified textiles with brick materials formed contouring to the nonplanar fiber surfaces of fabric substrate as a 3D conformal layer of porous microstructures by a unique breath figure self-assembling strategy of employing water microdroplet arrays as soft dynamic templates that can be controlled, formed and removed spontaneously. In this paper, the main influential factors such as solution concentration, relative humidity, temperature, brick materials and fabric substrates were studied systematically to control and adjust the formation of 3D conformal porous microstructures. The obtained 3D conformal porous microstructured textiles (3CPMTs) hierarchically combining the inherent texture features of porous network of textiles and honeycomb porous microstructures templated from water microdroplet arrays, not only possess new functions of introduced brick materials (such as triboelectric performance and wettability), maintain the excellent inherent advantages (such as flexibility, air permeability, water vapor permeability and unique texture features) of fabrics, but also enhance the tensile strength and thermal insulation performance of substrates. Taking advantages of the introduced functions, they can be either used for conventional applications (i.e. oil/water separation) with enhanced performance or explored for new applications (i.e. self-powered sensors with textile breathability and comfort) with truly wearable potentials. We believe this efficient, robust and versatile strategy opens up numerous possibilities for designing and developing a broad range of advanced multifunctional textiles upon end uses.