As a cheap and abundant agricultural byproduct, buckwheat hull is expected to be applied in many fields such as textile, biotechnology, and medicine. In this paper, the physicochemical properties of buckwheat hull extraction (BHE) and its dyeing abilities for wool fabric with different eco-friendly mordants and methods were studied. The theoretical process, colorfastness, and UV-protection properties of the dyed wool fabric with BHE were investigated. The results showed that BHE solution had good thermal and reduction stability. The dyeing process of BHE on wool was in accordance with the Langmuir model and had uniform monolayer adsorption. Wool fabrics dyed directly or through a mordanting process demonstrated good washing colorfastness and acceptable crocking- and light colorfastness. The dyed wool fabrics with KAl²⁺ and meta-mordanting showed excellent UV-protection as well as exceptional antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli. Therefore, BHE presents a novel alternative for some synthetic dyes that are applied in the textile industry.

In recent years, actuators based on carbon nanotube (CNT) or graphene demonstrate great potential applications in the fields of artificial muscles, smart switches, robotics, and so on. The electrothermal and photothermal bending actuators based on CNT/graphene and polymer composites show large bending actuations, which are superior to traditional thermal-driven actuators. However, the influence of material parameters (thickness, temperature change, etc.) on the actuation performance needs to be further studied, because it is a critical point to the design and fabrication of high-performance actuators. In this work, finite element analysis (FEA) is employed to simulate the actuation performance of CNT/polymer actuator, which has a bilayer structure. The main focus of this work is to design and to optimize material parameters by using computational method. FEA simulation results show that each layer thickness of actuator has an important influence on the actuation deformation. A maximum curvature of 2.7 cm is obtained by simulation, which is much larger than most of the actuator curvature reported in previous experiments. What is more, larger temperature change and larger difference of coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between two layers will result in larger bending actuation. This study is expected to provide valuable theoretical reference for the design and realization of CNT-based thermal actuator with ultra-large actuation performance.

Oxygen plasma etching followed with spraying of hydrophobic suspension containing SiO₂ nanoparticles were used to construct superhydrophobic cotton fabric, and the adhesion behavior of the superhydrophobic surface to deionized water, dye liquor, sterile defibrinated sheep blood, and simulated blood solutions was studied and evaluated in focus. Results of the present study showed the water contact and water slip angles of the superhydrophobic cotton fabric were 158.6° and 7.3° with 5 wt% of hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS). The plasma etching imparted uniform strip grooves on the fiber, which together with the deposition of SiO₂ nanoparticles constituted a dual-scale rough structure on the fabric surface. FTIR analysis showed the successful combination of HDTMS and SiO₂ nanoparticles and covering on the cotton surface. This superhydrophobic surface possessed hydrophobic effect even after 35 times of abrasion and immersion in strong acid or alkali solutions for 8 h. The surface tension and viscosity of simulated blood and sterile defibrinated sheep blood (SDSB) were similar, with a contact angle of only 139.7° and a slip angle above 20°. And their adhesion forces were calculated by the Cassie-Baxter equation to be 30.93 and 37.88 μN. Moreover, the droplets placement of simulated blood and SDSB on the superhydrophobic surface for 2 h caused trace adhesion but no penetration. This indicated that the superhydrophobic surface had anti-adhesion performance to the liquids. In conclusion, it was evident that the superhydrophobic fabric has good application prospects in the field of textiles for daily life and medical protection.