Content area
Full text
Juan Hinestroza and Margaret Frey are pushing the textile frontier by developing nanofibers to act as biological sensors and shields against viruses, bacteria, and hazardous particles.
Stone, bronze, and iron have transformed human civilization so dramatically that major time periods are identified with them. Juan Hinestroza, an assistant professor in the Department of Textiles and Apparel (TXA), believes that nanotechnology will revolutionize the near future in much the same way.
Hinestroza and his TXA colleague Margaret Frey, the Lois and MeI Tukman Assistant Professor, are using nanotechnology to create radically new textiles and to enhance conventional textiles with greater functionality. Hinestroza calls what he does a "technological oxymoron."
"People perceive textile manufacturing as an old technology, but it can provide the bridge to making nanotechnology a commercial reality," he explains. "What I'm doing is merging two revolutionary technologies that are 200 years apart (textile technology and nanotechnology), complementing the old technology with new developments in science. I say 'revolutionary' because both technologies have changed the way we see the world."
Having joined the College of Human Ecology faculty in January 2006, Hinestroza is developing remarkable fibers potentially capable of filtering out viruses, bacteria, and hazardous particles too small to see with the naked eye. He received a John D. Watson Young Investigator Award from the New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research in 2005 to expedite this work, which is being done in collaboration with scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"It was humbling to get that award," Hinestroza reflects, "because the award is named in honor of James Watson, who received the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of the DNA, and he's still alive." Hinestroza also receives support from grants of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Merging the old and the new, Hinestroza uses a process called electrospinning to create the fibers from which he constructs his much-in-demand biofilters.Electrospinning has been around since 1934 but has been used on the commercial scale only since the early 1990s. It involves dissolving a polymer-either a natural polymer derived from plant-based cellulose or a synthetic polymer such as nylon or polyester-in a solvent, squeezing the liquid polymer solution through a pinhole, and applying...