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Progress on solar-powered fabrics

April 1st, 2023

Pvilion’s Heavy Duty Portable Solar Canopy, a 2022 IAA award-winner, is a PVC-coated polyester canopy integrated with solar panels that can effectively power equipment, lighting, cell phones, laptops and other gear. Photo: Pvilion As a greener, increasingly high-tech world seeks ways to better optimize the power of the sun, textiles manufacturers are competing to be […]

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Textiles team up with technology for smart medical products

August 1st, 2019

Technological advances in the medical field are nothing short of mind-blowing. by Pamela Mills-Senn Take operating room (OR) technology. In today’s ORs, one might find an array of smart surgical tools, augmented reality devices and precision robotics that assist surgeons in performing the most complex and exacting of procedures. Patients are greatly benefiting from these […]

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Biomimetics: Fabrics borrow from nature to solve problems

October 31st, 2017

For most people, arriving home from a hike covered in burrs would likely cause aggravation. But for George de Mestral, the burrs became an inspiration. Curious about how they clung so stubbornly to his clothes, the Swiss electrical engineer put them under a microscope, which revealed hundreds of “hooks” that attached to anything with a […]

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