ITHACA - Researchers at Cornell University in the US say they have developed a new method to create fire resistant, anti-bacterial and wrinkle-free fabric coatings from polyester textile waste.
Scientists cut polyester textiles into pieces and chemically decompose them into a soup of raw materials, before adding a metal solution which selectively links with the monomer building blocks of polyester.
They then form tiny cages - called metal-organic frameworks - that settle to the bottom of the soup and can be used to make coatings, which can be structurally tweaked for different uses.
