Leaf vascular patterned fabric for advanced liquid sweat management

Abstract

Sweat evaporation is essential for heat dissipation and thermal comfort during intense activities or hot conditions. Existing moisture management textiles (MMTs) facilitate sweat transport and evaporation but struggle under heavy sweating, leading to next-to-skin stickiness discomfort and potential health risks caused by clammy chill. Inspired by the high liquid transportation efficiency of the plant vascular system, here a novel vascular cool fabric is proposed with a structure that mimics leaf veins to distribute sweat to a wider region for enhanced evaporative cooling while minimizing wetness discomfort. Experimental results show that the vascular cool fabric has 54.2% higher evaporation rate per unit wet area and 18% higher drying efficiency in comparison with a fully wet fabric surface, thanks to the evaporation edge effect at the wet–dry interface. Human wear trails in hot and humid environments confirm that a T-shirt made of the vascular cool fabric exhibited 15% less sweat accumulation and a 24.1% improvement in overall comfort (p < 0.05) (lighter, drier, less sticky, and less stuffy) compared to conventional moisture management fabric. The proposed vascular pattern is easily applied to various fabric substrates, offering promising potential for future thermal-wet comfort applications.