Nano Particles Modified Shelter Materials for Self Decontamination and Visible Detection of Chemical Agents

Collective Protection Shelters have historically been heavy, cumbersome, carried a high logistic burden, and above all been very expensive. Although, through the years several advances have been made in barrier materials to improve the protective capabilities of collective protection shelters, a revolutionary new technology that offers a long-term solution to these problems is desirable. The new approach would require improving performance of existing lightweight, flexible, flame resistant, chemical biological (CB) textile barrier materials as well as incorporating visible detection and self-decontamination capabilities in to the materials. During the Phase I, Lynntech has developed a self decontaminating smart textile material that uses catalytic reactivity of nano particles to decontaminate chemical agents while this reaction is used to exhibit a visible warning when the barrier is compromised. This material has been integrated with the existing CB barrier materials to produce a composite shelter material. During the Phase II, Lynntech will further advance and scale up this process to produce a multi-layers stand alone shelter material that will have improved barrier properties, self decontaminating characteristics and color indicating capabilities against variety of CWAs. A prototype scaled down tent model will be fabricated and delivered to the army at the end of Phase II.