Fast-absorbing and quick-drying wool fabrics with good washing durability have been developed, using a unique nano-finishing technology. This project has been led by professor Fangqiong Tang from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry at Chinese Academy of Sciences and Yi Li from the Institute of Textiles and Clothing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Fabricating fast-absorbing and quick-drying wool fabrics has always been a hot spot in wool industry. Meanwhile, fabricating fabrics with fast-absorbing and quick-drying properties, improving the fabrics' clothing comfort and developing an effective strategy to enhance the washing durability of nanotechnology modified functional fabrics are of great importance for both academic and industrial research.

Using a surface grafting and in situ growth strategy, this joint research team fabricated an ultrathin layer with 20 nm silica nanoparticles on the wool fiber surface. All indexes of the obtained wool fabrics reached the need of fast-absorbing and quick-drying properties according to Chinese National Standard. More importantly, the new properties can be maintained after washing 20 times in a washing machine. Moreover, the in situ growth strategy reduced the finishing procedures because the synthesis of nanoparticles and surface modification of wool fibers were in the same process, and provided a new way to fabricate nanotechnology modified functional fabrics.

These results have been published in the current issue of Chemistry & Sustainability, Energy & Materials, Angewandte Chemie's very successful sister journal in Wiley online library (ChemSusChem, 2010, 3, 1031–1035). After published, Nanowerk, a leading nanotechnology and nanosciences portal in the world, has reported a news feature about this research progress in their Spotlight titled by 'Nanotechnology improves wool fabrics'.

The relevant work has been applied for a Chinese patent and then for an international patent.