Fig. 1: Schematic of the functional structure design of integrated cooling (i-Cool) textile of heat conduction and sweat transportation for personal perspiration management and its working mechanism.

a, Schematic of the i-Cool textile. The synergistic effect of the heat conductive matrix and sweat transport channels provides a solution to textile in personal perspiration management. b, Schematic of the working mechanism of the i-Cool textile. When human body perspires, the water transport channels can wick sweat from the skin surface and spread sweat onto the large-area top surface made of fibers quickly. The heat conductive matrix transfers human body heat efficiently to where the evaporation happens, to assist fast evaporation. Meanwhile, it can deliver the evaporative cooling effect to human body skin efficiently. c, Comparison between conventional textiles and the i-Cool textile. Conventional textiles usually offer comfort via buffer effect of absorbing sweat, which is helpful to relieve discomfort of wet and sticky sense. However, its limited evaporation rate and evaporative cooling efficiency cannot provide effective cooling effect for skin and may undermine the buffer effect soon. Different from normal textiles, the i-Cool textile functions not only to transport sweat but also provide an excellent heat conduction path for the accelerated evaporation and taking away a great amount of heat from the skin, which can prevent the i-Cool textile from flooding to a much greater extent and avoid excessive perspiration. Therefore, the i-Cool textile can help human body achieve enhanced cooling effect with greatly reduced sweat, by using the sweat in a highly efficient manner. The weight contrast in red arrows drawing illustrates the heat transport ability difference. The dot size and density contrast in the sweat evaporation drawing shows the different evaporation ability. The drop size contrast in the sweat drawing illustrates that i-Cool textile can help reduce sweat consumption.