niall’s blog

THE LAST OF THE SMALL TOWN PLAYBOYS! who are they? we need a DRUMMER! NOW! Maybe James would be our best option?

Textiles innovation can comprise both product innovation “the development of new products to address existing or latent consumer demand” or process innovation, leading to lower unit costs, greater capacity, or improved quality. Australia is well positioned to take the lead in textiles innovation, due to its strong production base, good technology base and established infrastructure (manufacturing, marketing, distribution, quality control).

In Australia, technology supply to the industry is led by CSIRO Textile & Fibre Technology: the leading domestic technology supplier to sectors such as wool, cotton, leather and technical textiles at the fibre, yarn, fabric and garment levels.

The Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, which includes University of Wollongong, RMIT University, CSIRO TFT, CSIRO CMIT, has internationally recognised expertise.

The Council of Textile and Fashion Industries Limited is also engaged in a range of projects aimed at assisting the Australian Textiles and Clothing industry to create, adapt and commercialise innovative practices and products.

In the near term, the opportunity for nanotechnology in the textiles industry is in product innovation, not process innovation. Nanotechnology is more likely to be used to produce new materials, or enhance the properties of existing materials, than to reduce the production cost or improve quality.

A number of nanotechnology innovations are already commercially available. These include:

·         Stain, wrinkle, and liquid-resistant fabrics

·         Clothing which can absorb body odours

·         Clothing that emits deodorant by slow release

·         Clothing that changes colour with change in light

·         Clothing that changes colour with external or body heat

There are a number of opportunities which will be explored as nanotechnology develops further:

·         New blended fabrics for specific applications (eg. sportswear, mountainwear, military applications); including the incorporation of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) into fabrics. It is expected that composites with CNTs or interweaving with extruded CNT fibres will introduce higher conductivity and capacitive, as well as high strength.

·         Property enhancement or alterations (UV blocking, durability, breathability, flexibility, recyclability, colour retention, self-repair etc.); included in this are the introduction of electronic properties into fabrics by treatment with inherently conducting polymers. These provide capabilities such as sensing (chemical and mechanical), energy generation (photovoltaics), energy storage (batteries, supercapacitors) and charge dissipation (anti-static). Additionally, controlled release polymers may replenish and/or trigger release of antifungal, surface finish or medical growth aids to the polymer surface. The triggered release systems may be made to be responsive to stimuli such as changes in temperature, humidity pH and/or dissolved oxygen.

·         Development of specific aesthetic properties (eg. glow in the dark, colour change with angle of light, colour change artwork with applied electric field).

·         Production of synthetic fibres (eg. polyester) with properties of natural fibres (eg. wool) by surface coating.

Nanotechnology as an emerging field is strongly related to visionary prospects which are disposed to reappear as dystopian concerns. As long as nanotechnology does not provide reliable criteria for assessing these worries as rational or as irrational they remain a challenge for ethical reflection. Given this underdetermination, many nanovisions and their corresponding concerns should therefore be considered as “arational.” For that reason, a “constructivist” stance is endorsed which does not seek to take part in discussions as to how ethicists should cope with controversial worries, but tries to observe how concerns are managed by different social actors. This perspective allows us to remodel some concerns such as “grey goo” not solely as a societal reaction, but also as challenging and irritating factors. As such they potentially initiate two different processes simultaneously: a differentiation in terms of demarcating science from non-science on the one hand, and a rationalization of concerns on the other. Analyzing these processes empirically allows to reconstruct how “arational” concerns are socially made rational or, on the contrary, irrational.

Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced. In its original sense, ‘nanotechnology’ refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high performance products.

we are going to be learning about nanotechnology over the next few weeks in chemistry.

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