The thermal transfer between individual body and the surroundings occurs by several paths such as radiation, evaporation, conduction, and convection. Thermal management is related with the heat transfer between the human body and the surroundings, which aims to keep the body temperature in the comfort range either via preserving or via emitting the body heat. The essential duty of clothing is to contribute to the thermal balance of the human body by regulating the heat and moisture transfer. In the case of poorly controlled body heat, health problems such as hyperthermia and heatstroke along with environmental problems due to higher energy consumption can occur. Recently, research has been focused on advanced textiles with novel approaches on materials synthesis and structure design, which can provide thermal comfort together with energy saving. This review article focuses on the innovative strategies basically on the passive textile models for improved thermal conductivity. We will discuss both the fabrication techniques and the inclusion of carbon-based and boron-based fillers to form nano-hybrid textile solutions, which are used to improve the thermal conductivity of the materials.

Liposomes are one of the most attractive particles in different industries, especially pharmaceutical applications. The main reasons for such a desire for liposomes are nontoxicity, small size, the ability to encapsulate and carry biological components, and finally biocompatibility and biodegradability. The present study aims to simulate the active electrohydrodynamic-based micromixer for the high-throughput formation of nanoscale liposomes. The micromixer consists of two inlets for de-ionized water and one inlet for ethanol with lipid particles. Two configurations of asymmetric electrodes, namely, longitudinal and the array of electrodes, were introduced and examined. Electrodes were placed at the bottom of the mixer, and a direct current electrical field was applied to them. Generated chaotic advection inside the microchannel by the electrical field and, consequently, increasing surface-to-volume ratio is the main reason for the increase in the formation of liposomes. These configurations of electrodes cause the liposome formation occurs at very low voltages, which is the most advantage of the proposed micromixer. The Taguchi method as a statistical method of design of experiment (DOE) was utilized to reduce the number of required simulations. The simulations showed that case 6 had the best mixing index of 0.586 among the studied models. Also, according to the DOE results, the best possible design was found and simulated and a mixing index of 0.743, which has a 5.3% error in comparison to the predicted results.

Inertial microfluidics systems carry a great importance for particle focusing and separation due to their simple configurations, robust structures, and precise high-throughput cell manipulation ability. In this paper, a novel microchannel geometry, called Sunflower, which is developed by superimposing two microchannel geometries, is presented. An empirical formula for normalized focus quality, which enables the quantitative comparison of particle focusing abilities of different microchannel geometries via fluorescent images, is introduced. In particle focusing experiments, focus quality enhancements ranging from 14% at 0.9 ml min ⁻¹ to 487% at 0.3 ml min ⁻¹ is observed. Besides, 99.57% of the 9.9 µ m polystyrene particles are collected at a flow rate of 2.5 ml min ⁻¹ from a 60 µ m wide outlet section, whose location within the microchannel width is specifically tailored. A clear, stable and narrow particle focus line is observed not only at an optimum flow rate, but also in a great range of flow rates between 0.3 ml min ⁻¹ and 2.5 ml min ⁻¹ , offering great levels of flexibility and robustness against disturbances. Moreover, the novel microchannel geometry is tested with HL-60 cancer cell lines, and similar results are obtained in a great flow rate range without an observed effect on the cell’s viability.