University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Awards
- Project Name: Hazardous Radiation and Microbial Protective Integrated Fabrics for Advanced Protection Under Uncontrolled Environment
Awarding Agency: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy
Project Summary:
The need for advanced fabrics will be explored to: a) design and synthesize built-in multifunctional microbial protective, self-cleaning and hazardous radiation defensive fibers to enhance the extreme situational protection in the battlefield or under uncontrolled environments. We will create integrated functional fabrics with engineering of the surface and interface of natural or sustainable synthetic fibers that will allow our soldiers to have simultaneous protection against the microbial and radiation hazards using photosensitive phenomena of biocompatible semiconducting nanophase; and b) to design and synthesize semiconductor-quantum dot-phosphor based technology to harvest and prevent ionizing radiation from uncontrolled or threatened release.
Outcome:
Developed fibers to sense and provide protection from ionizing/hazardous radiation and ensured no optical, chemical, or mechanical property degradation of the base fibers due to functionalization. The project demonstrated, evaluated, and documented the protective fabric materials
