Personal security

Uniform of The Future – Breathable and Protective

In work that aims to protect soldiers from biological and chemical threats, a group of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists has created a material that is highly breathable, a critical requirement for protective clothing to prevent heat-stress and exhaustion when military personnel are engaged in missions in contaminated environments, yet protective from biological hazards.

This material is the first key component of futuristic smart uniforms that also will respond to and protect from environmental chemical hazards.

The LLNL team fabricated flexible polymeric membranes with aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) channels as moisture conductive pores. The size of these pores: 5,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

These membranes also provide protection from biological agents due to their very small pore size. Biological threats like bacteria or viruses are much larger and typically more than 10-nm in size. This theory, of course, has been backed up by testing of the material.