Nanofibrous Membranes in Multilayer Fabrics to Avoid PCM Leakages

Abstract Incorporating phase change materials (PCMs) into textiles is one facial method to realize personal thermal management (PTM). Despite the significant progress of PCM‐incorporated textiles, the incorporation of PCMs into textiles remains an outstanding challenge. In this work, we described a sandwich‐like multi‐layer PCM fabric, which consisted of nanofibrous membranes as barrier layers and PCM‐loaded viscose fabric as a PCM‐loaded layer. Three common organic PCMs including polyethylene glycol (PEG), paraffin wax (PW) and myristic acid (MA), and the polyurethane (PU) nanofibrous membranes was used. As a result, we achieved that weak interfacial adhesion between melting PCMs and PU nanofibrous membranes accounted for leakage phenomena. Only the sample (UPWV) with PU nanofibrous membranes as barrier layers and paraffin wax (PW) as PCMs had no leakage. Little confinement of PW crystallization in the UPWV was found. Besides, thermal energy storage, phase transition, and thermal buffering effect of UPWV supported various applications.