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Downy feather-like para-aramid fibers and nonwovens with enhanced absorbency, air filtration and thermal insulation performances

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Abstract

Fiber morphology with off-standing branches, as found in nature, e.g., in goose downy feather, provides exquisite functions that can be barely achieved by man-made fiber systems. In this work, we develop a simple and scalable method for generating downy feather-like para-aramid fibers and assemblies. Through treating commercial para-aramid microfibers with mild alkaline solution (low concentration of NaOH), a synergistic effect of chemical hydrolysis and physical shearing is successfully triggered to generate abundant nanofiber branches on the surface of para-aramid fibers. When compared with conventional monotonous structures, nonwovens composed of downy feather-like fibers exhibit a typical multiscale fiber morphology, larger specific surface area and smaller pore size, thus showing enhanced particles adsorption capacity (over twice of the pristine nonwoven), excellent oil absorption capacity (increased by ∼ 50%), improved air filtration performances (doubled the filtration efficiency) and effective thermal insulation (thermal conductivity = 26.1 mW·m−1·K−1). More attractively, the intrinsic flame-retardant nature of para-aramid is well inherited by the downy feather-like fibers, and the fabrication process requires neither sophisticated equipment, nor tedious procedures, making us believe the strong competitiveness of these fibers and assemblies.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Graduate Student Innovation Fund of Donghua University (No. CUSF-DH-D-2020021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center of Technical Textiles, Ministry of Education, College of Textiles, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Kangli Xu, Jixia Deng, Guangliang Tian, Lei Zhan, Jiajia Ma, Qinfei Ke & Chen Huang

  2. Changshu Weicheng Nonwoven Equipment Co., Ltd., Suzhou, 215539, China

    Lijun Wang

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  1. Kangli Xu
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  2. Jixia Deng
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  3. Guangliang Tian
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  8. Chen Huang
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Correspondence to Qinfei Ke or Chen Huang.

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Downy feather-like para-aramid fibers and nonwovens with enhanced absorbency, air filtration and thermal insulation performances

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Xu, K., Deng, J., Tian, G. et al. Downy feather-like para-aramid fibers and nonwovens with enhanced absorbency, air filtration and thermal insulation performances. Nano Res. 15, 5695–5704 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4155-3

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