From Nanoparticles to Novel Protective Garments

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will lay the groundwork to investigate the untapped potential of highly adsorbent and reactive nanoparticles in the area of protective garments manufacturing. The overall objective of this collaborative Phase I research between NanoScale and Gentex Corp. is to create and test new materials that would be useful in the production of protective clothing. During routine chemical use, it is not always apparent when exposure occurs. Many chemicals pose invisib le hazards and offer no warnings. More importantly, terrorists and saboteurs use a variety of toxic industrial chemicals to create improvised explosives, chemical agents and poisons. When dealing with situations involving hazardous materials, released eith er by accident or on purpose, protective clothing is critical to guard against the effects of toxic or corrosive products that could enter the body through inhalation or skin absorption, causing adverse effects. More specifically, this proposal seeks to es tablish the feasibility of incorporating highly adsorbent and reactive nanoparticles into lightweight and permeable textiles and to evaluate the resultant fabric's utility as protective clothing by industry standard testing procedures. These novel protecti ve garments will be tailored specifically toward personnel associated with federal, state or local emergency agencies as well as fire fighters and civilian first responders. In order to achieve the over- all objective, first, reactivity of selected nanoparticle formulations towards various toxic industrial chemicals will be explored by use of a quartz spring balance to determine sorptive capacity. Based on the outcome of this research, a single reactive nanoparticle formulation will be chosen for us e in fabrics. The down- selected nanoparticle formulation will then be incorporated into suitable fabrics using two established techniques. Next, these fabric test swatches will be evaluated for a number of criteria using industry recognized ASTM test meth ods. Finally, the top four nanoparticles embedded fabrics will be tested for physical and chemical resistance against two representative toxic chemicals, using a standard ASTM procedure.