Nano Particles Modified Shelter Materials for Self Decontamination and Visible Detection of Chemical Agents

Collective Protection Shelters have historically been heavy, cumbersome, carried a high logistic burden, and above all been very expensive. Through the years advances have been made in barrier materials to improve the protective capabilities of collective protection shelters. These solutions include fluoropolymer coatings as an after-market process for general-purpose shelter materials, nanotechnological enhancement of commodity polymers, and low temperature processible fluoropolymers. Each of these thrust areas have their own technical challenges and associated investments to mature the technologies. A revolutionary new approach is thus desirable that could offer a long-term solution to these problems. This would require improving existing lightweight, flexible, flame resistant, chemical biological (CB) textile barrier materials via incorporating visible detection and self-decontamination capabilities in to the materials. Lynntech propose to develop a self decontaminating smart textile material that uses catalytic reactivity of nano particles to decontaminate chemical agents while the chemical reaction for decontamination is used to exhibit a visible warning when the barrier is compromised. This material will be integrated with the existing CB barrier materials to produce a composite shelter material that offers enhanced CB protection as well as allows for a visual agent dependent identification of chemical exposure due to breach in barrier material.