A prestigious American University's engineers have developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that, if woven into clothing, could cool your body far more efficiently than is possible with the natural or synthetic fabrics in clothes we wear today. Describing their work in Science, the researchers suggest that this new family of fabrics could become the basis for garments that keep people cool in hot climates without air conditioning.To develop their cooling textile,the Stanford researchers blended nanotechnology, photonics and chemistry to give polyethylene -- the clear, clingy plastic we use as kitchen wrap -- a number of characteristics desirable in clothing material: It allows thermal radiation, air and water vapor to pass right through, and it is opaque to visible light.
"If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy," said an…
