IT COULD pass as a piece of contemporary art. In fact it鈥檚 the US army鈥檚 latest idea for protecting its soldiers from biological and chemical weapons. The image (unfortunately only available in the print edition of 快猫短视频) shows a face mask being created out of fibres less than a micrometre thick, producing something more like a membrane than a fabric. It is seamless and microporous: it allows water vapour to pass through, but stops small particles and liquids. In other words, it acts as an aerosol barrier while allowing the wearer鈥檚 skin to 鈥渂reathe鈥�.
The mask was made at the US army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts, by 鈥渆lectrospinning鈥� polyethylene oxide nanofibres directly onto a bust automatically sculpted from a digitised scan of a volunteer鈥檚 face. In electrospinning, an electric charge is applied to a droplet of polymer solution suspended from the tip of a pipette, causing a fine jet of the solution to shoot out towards an electrically grounded target. The drop splays as it hits the target 鈥� in this case, the bust 鈥� creating a web of small fibres.
Ultimately, the aim is to scan a soldier鈥檚 entire body and then electrospin garments directly onto a sculpted replica to produce a perfect fit. Because the clothes would be lighter and require less material than conventional protective clothing, they should also be cheaper to manufacture.
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There are other potential uses for these membranes, as textiles curator Matilda McQuaid explains in her book Extreme Textiles: Designing for high performance (Thames & Hudson, 2005), from which the image above is taken. Because their large surface area provides numerous binding points for incoming molecules, they could be used as bandage- or clothing-based drug-delivery systems, or as filters for hazardous industrial chemicals. Some researchers are also working with biopolymers such as collagen and elastin, both found in the human body, as scaffolds for tissue and organ grafts.
