关键词: 功能纺织品, 复合棉织物, 个人热管理, 单向水传输, 热传导

Abstract: Thermal homeostasis and stable body temperature are crucial for personal comfort and work productivity. The human body maintains a core temperature of around 37 °C through a complex physiological thermoregulation system. However, in extreme conditions such as sports, military, firefighting, and medical care, the body's thermoregulation capacity is easily overwhelmed, leading to heat stress and physiological harm. Traditional textiles with inadequate thermal and moisture management performance can result in heat and sweat accumulation on the skin surface. Cooling by external equipment such as fans and air conditioners is commonly used to achieve thermal comfort but consumes considerable energy and imposes a burden on sustainable energy. 
While researchers have made progress in developing Janus nano-fibrous membranes that offer excellent unidirectional water transport and cooling performance, there are still significant challenges to overcome. One of the primary obstacles is the lack of interlayer forces in these membranes, which can cause them to peel off easily and trap liquid between the layers during unidirectional water transport, resulting in a loss of the material's unidirectional water transport ability. Moreover, the large-scale fabrication of electro-sprayed nano-fibrous membranes has not yet been achieved, which limits their practical applications. Addressing these issues is critical to developing effective and practical thermal and moisture management textiles that can deliver superior performance. As a result of these challenges, there is an increasing demand for the development of simpler and more practical thermal and moisture management textiles that can overcome the limitations of existing materials and provide better performance. In this work, a unidirectional water transport Janus composite cotton fabric was prepared for personal cooling, utilizing its two functions of unidirectional sweat expulsion and thermal conduction to synergistically cool the human body. The Janus structure was constructed by using a screen printing technique combined with a spray-coating method to load SiC NPs/PVA coating and PDMS coating on both sides of the cotton fabric. The wetting behavior, unidirectional water transport, and thermal conduction performance of the Janus composite cotton fabric were characterized after the static water contact angle test, drip diffusion experiment, and heating platform warming experiment. The Janus composite cotton fabric also showed good cooling effect in outdoor environments.
Nanoengineered textiles can intelligently improve personal comfort in severe changeable environments and promote sustainable development while alleviating potential health risks from global warming. The results of the research on the unidirectional water transport Janus composite cotton fabric for personal cooling have a wide range of applications in the field of thermal and moisture management textiles for outdoors.

Key words: functional textiles, composite cotton fabric, personal thermal management, unidirectional water transport, thermal conduction