Synthesis of Functional Nanocapsules and their Application to Cotton Fabric for Thermal Management

Phase change materials (PCMs) are smart materials that can provide comfort to the wearer against extreme weather by absorbing heat in hot environment and releasing stored heat in cold environment. In this research nanocapsules containing mixture of paraffin as phase change materials are synthesized to bring the temperature around 33 °C which is closer to skin comfort temperature have been developed. The nanocapsules were applied on a cotton fabric via a pad-dry-cure process and the resultant fabric was evaluated using DSC and SEM, comparisons made to a microencapsulate PCM treated fabric. Furthermore the synthesized nanocapsules are incorporated into polypropylene monofilament; its properties were compared to monofilament incorporated with microencapsulated PCM. It was found nano scaled PCM capsules are more beneficial to textile applications.