Cotton Fabric Cleans Itself When Exposed to Sunlight

By Jim.Robinson|December 15, 2011

Country music legend John Denver used to sing that sunshine on his shoulders made him happy. If researchers in China continue to make progress, sunshine might do more than make people happy: It might clean and deodorize cotton clothing for them as it hangs on the line to dry.

The new fabric, developed by scientists from Donghua University in Shanghai, can be cleaned and deodorized simply by hanging them on a clothesline in the sun, according to an article published in the UK-based “Click Green” newsletter.

The new fabric is coated with nanoparticles containing nitrogen and titanium dioxide, which is used in a number of products – one of which, ironically, is sunscreen lotion. The coating breaks down dirt and kills microbes when exposed to certain types of light and is already used in several self-cleaning and odor-killing products.

In tests that exposed the fabric to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, the treated cotton eliminated an orange stain and retained its odor-killing and self-cleaning properties even after normal washing and drying.