INSIDE THE COTTON by Marcia Amidon Lusted Content Consultant Gaylon D Morgan Professor and State Extension Cotton Agronomist Department of Soil Crop Sciences Texas A M AgriLife Extension Service INDUSTRY BUSINESS BIG Essential Library An Imprint of Abdo Publishing abdopublishing com
1 THE UNIVERSAL FIBER In April 2016 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT created a new nonprofit group to speed up breakthroughs in fiber science and advance the development of new smart fabrics The nonprofit group the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America AFFOA worked to improve the fabric used in clothes transportation and electronics Developments would enhance protective clothing worn by soldiers and first responders Part of the group’s mission is to develop fabrics that have applications beyond clothing This includes bands of sensitive cloth that monitor unborn babies fabrics used in creating touch-sensitive skin for robots and even special knitted fabrics that are made into an exoskeleton that helps rehabilitate injuries AFFOA also hopes to fund research into embedding fibers with special properties for communication or energy generation and creating new digital tools for designing clothing such as a machine that knits special fabrics in a process similar to a 3D printer Scientists are already working on cotton fibers coated with gold nanoparticles The fibers could be used to sense toxic gases and other pollutants These new fabrics include one of the oldest fibers known to humans cotton So why are researchers using cotton instead of inventing a completely new fiber Cotton is one of Researchers are creating fabrics that can store energy to charge cell phones and other electronic devices 5
