Boosting collaboration between research centres and industry for innovation in functional textiles

The 2BFUNTEX MDTs on Antimicrobial Textiles, Nanotechnologies and Electrospinning all benefit from the innovations in nanotechnology. Recent advances in developing antibacterial polymers such as polypyrrole (for garments and UV-cured chitosan (for water depuration) were successfully applied as functional textile finishing nanolayers at lab-scale. In filtration applications, the production of keratin-based nanocomposite nanofibre membranes containing silver and titanium nanoparticles by electrospinning has demonstrated interesting properties such as the removal of metal ions and the absorption and photo-degradation of dyes from water, as well as biocidal effects.