Design, Characterization, and Evaluation of Textile Systems and Coatings for Sports Use: Applications in the Design of High-Thermal Comfort Wearables

Exposure to high temperatures during indoor and outdoor activities increases the risk of heat-related illness such as cramps, rashes, and heatstroke (HS). Fatal cases of HS are ten times more common than serious cardiac episodes in sporting scenarios, with untreated cases leading to mortality rates as high as 80%. Enhancing thermal comfort can be achieved through heat loss in enclosed spaces and the human body, utilizing heat transfer mechanisms such as radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation, which do not require initial energy input. Among these, two primary mechanisms are commonly employed in the textile industry to enhance passive cooling: radiation and conduction. The radiation approach encompasses two aspects: (1) reflecting solar spectrum (SS) wavelengths and (2) transmitting and emitting in the atmospheric window (AW). Conduction involves dissipating heat through materials with a high thermal conductivity. Our study focuses on the combined effect of these radiative and conductive approaches to increase thermal energy loss, an area that has not been extensively studied to date. Therefore, the main objective of this project is to develop, characterize, and evaluate a nanocomposite polymeric textile system using electrospinning, incorporating graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets and titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO NPs) within a recycled polyethylene terephthalate (r-PET) matrix to improve thermal comfort through the dissipation of thermal energy by radiation and conduction. The textile system with a 5:1 molar ratio between TiO NPs and GO demonstrates 89.26% reflectance in the SS and 98.40% transmittance/emittance in the AW, correlating to superior cooling performance, with temperatures 20.06 and 1.27 °C lower than skin temperatures outdoors and indoors, respectively. Additionally, the textile exhibits a high thermal conductivity index of 0.66 W/m K, contact angles greater than 120°, and cell viability exceeding 80%. These findings highlight the potential of the engineered textiles in developing high-performance sports cooling fabrics, providing significant advancements in thermal comfort and safety for athletes.