Who Will Lead Smart Clothing To The Commanding Heights Of Graphene VS Carbon Fiber?

As a huge mineral resource in garment industry, it has been coveted by major garment enterprises.

According to the authoritative organization, in 2016, smart clothing jumped from almost zero to the first category of wearable products, with an estimated shipment volume of up to 26 million.

As a big country of garment manufacture, China is also a large demand country with unlimited potential for development.

It can be predicted that the smooth development of the smart clothing industry will present a 100 billion or even trillions of blue ocean market, and 2016 will become the first year of smart clothing.

Heating physiotherapy, the breaking point of smart clothing

In recent years, under the impact of the Internet, a large number of traditional garment enterprises have begun to go downhill. How to play their own advantages in the Internet wave and achieve industrial upgrading will occupy the commanding heights of the garment industry in the next five years, and become a strategic issue of many traditional clothing enterprises.

With the rapid development of many smart wearable devices market, smart clothing has gradually entered the public life in the past two years. Smart clothing has become a major force for many traditional clothing enterprises. A large number of forward-looking traditional garment manufacturers and innovative technology companies have joined universities, research and development institutions to invest heavily in smart clothing.

Apart from traditional clothing, smart clothing is a cross-border product. It needs to combine technology, electronics, communications, Internet, medicine, materials science, textile technology, clothing design, garment manufacturing and other industries.

Among them, the development and application of new materials is undoubtedly the key link to promote the development of smart clothing industry.

In terms of new materials, due to the market demand for heating physiotherapy, smart clothing with the function of heating and physiotherapy guided by graphene and carbon fiber has become the main breakthrough point for many garment enterprises and technology enterprises.

Graphene VS carbon fiber, who is better?

In view of the two most widely used new kinds of heating physiotherapy materials in the smart clothing market, the reporters visited many experts and research institutes, and made a detailed comparison between graphene and carbon fibers.

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The research and use of it has a long history and is relatively mature in the market application, but its processing mode, structure and performance have great limitations.

Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has attracted worldwide attention due to its strong usability and scalability, and is known as the black gold in twenty-first Century.

In the field of textile application, the two have their own advantages.

According to Song Yabin, a graphene researcher at University of Manchester, graphene is derived from graphite minerals in the preparation process, forming a continuous production process through its unique wet spinning technology, which can be used more efficiently in the textile industry than carbon fiber.

Secondly, in terms of structure and performance, carbon fiber is made up of irregular flake graphite microcrystals. This structure is very strict in controlling porosity, resulting in a decrease in mechanical properties of carbon fibers, which causes carbon fibers to have poor radial toughness and fracture easily. However, graphene lamellae are highly oriented in fiber axial direction, and the size of pverse crystals is much larger than that of traditional carbon fibers, so that they have good flexibility and can not break even in twisted knot state. This makes graphene fibers have great advantages in high-end textile industry.

In order to increase intuitionistic perception of the difference between graphene and carbon fiber in the application of textiles, we purchased two coats of graphene and carbon fiber materials for heating in the market.

Two pieces of the overall package difference is not big, all through a small mobile power supply for the clothing to provide basic electricity, about 40 degrees can be maintained about 4 hours or so, the power consumption is not very different, but this piece of graphite is more intelligent, can be through APP to 1 degrees as a single precise adjustment, more experience.

In terms of heating speed, graphene coat is much faster, and it feels warm in 1 minutes, and feels warm in 2 minutes.

In addition, the graphene jacket feels more uniform in heating.

The two materials have the function of infrared physiotherapy. They have good physiotherapy for various parts of the human body, such as the cervical vertebrae, the waist, the abdomen and the knees.

Because our experience is short, our feelings are not obvious.

We read the instructions in detail and found that the graphene coat has bactericidal function.

For this reason, Professor Luo Yang, southwest of Third Military Medical University, said that the sterilization of graphene is physically bactericidal, and it is quite safe and does not produce resistance.

According to Professor Luo, there are three ways to sterilize graphene, the first is direct cutting, because graphene is nanometer level, and bacteria are micron level, the former is 1000 times smaller than the latter. Graphene is like a sharp knife, directly killing bacteria.

The second is starving bacteria. Nano graphene can wrap bacteria tightly like cloth, so that bacteria can not absorb nutrients and starve to death.

The third is a slow death. Because graphene is too small, bacteria will swallow graphene into the belly. Just like a person eating foreign body will loose his stomach, causing bacteria to die away.

The natural properties of graphene sterilization are of great advantage to textiles.

We also found that graphene textile materials also have the advantage of washable, which is not available for carbon fiber materials.

Generally speaking, graphene has great advantages in the application of textiles, but its price is much higher than that of carbon fiber. However, we believe that with the continuous development of graphene industrialization, prices will not be a problem.

Application of graphene textiles, the future of smart clothing enterprises

It can be said that the emergence of graphene fibers has brought hope for improving the problems in the application of carbon fibers.

It is understood that in November 2015, Donghua University found that under the photo thermal stimulation, "editing" graphene morphology, controlled production pattern changes, making graphene in the field of intelligent wearable there are many possibilities for application.

Many Chinese clothing brands have invested heavily in the application of graphene light, so as to put more research and development achievements into industrial applications.

The research and application of graphene materials will lead to the development of new technologies by disintegrating the existing products. With the development of flexible display technology, the quality characteristics of graphene will have great application prospects in the high-end textile industry and smart wear field. The most important thing is that graphene fiber has better strength and stronger electrical and thermal properties, and it can play a role in lightweight electric conductors, fabric supercapacitors, intelligent biosensors and smart heating clothing.

The arrival of the "graphene age" is not in the imagination, but will really lead people's lives and improve their lives.