**Partner 21 - The Science of Small**

**Super Cloth**

**Margaret Frey**

*A nano-fiber is about 1/500 of human hair. the fibers that we work with
are... around a hundred nanometers in diameter...As we look at
microscope images of these fibers we almost never see any ends we only
see the size of the fiber but they do seem to be very, very long  so the
fabrics that you see could possibly be made of one single fiber just
moving back and forth just tangled to make that fabric.*

**Narrator**

Margaret Frey has worked with traditional fabrics for much of her
career. But in recent years, she has daringly entered into the science
of small.

**Margaret Frey**

*As the diameter of the fiber gets smaller and smaller, then the given
weight of fiber has a more and more surface. We are trying to find ways
to use that surface to do some pretty special things.*

*It causes the fabric to become more absorbent then an equivalent amount
of a conventional fabric. It also gives a lot of area a lot of surface
area where we can capture and detect biohazards. I wanted to really look
at what this could mean for fabrics and making fabrics that could do
something special.*

**Narrator**

With CSREES funding, Margaret and her Cornell team focused on biohazard
detection. The first step was to make the fibers from a time-tested
process known as electrospinning.

**Margaret Frey**

*We apply high voltage to droplet, something in the order of 15,000
volts...a very fine jet of polymer will erupt from the surface of that
droplet and is collected over on an electrical ground some distance away
the path that* *the fiber takes is very long it whips back and forth in
between that space during that time it cools down and the solvent
evaporates. And the fibers stretched out to a thinner and thinner
diameter. So using this technique, we're able to make the nano-fibers
much smaller than anything you are able to make using mechanical
forces.*

**Narrator**

The next challenge was to find a way to bond a biohazard detector to the
fiber. The team discovered that a Vitamin B material called biotin fit
the bill.

**Margaret Frey**

*We figured out that once we incorporated the biotin into the fibers,
then we could use the fabric platform to do biohazard sensing. I think
of this whole system as a tinker toy.*

**Narrator**

The researchers added a bonding protein, which easily combined with the
biotin. This mix of materials proved successful in rapidly detecting E.
coli bacteria in lab experiments.

**Margaret Frey**

*Detecting that E. coli for the first time was definitely a great day.
You know, we actually showed that this does work! There's places where
contamination a critical issue that needs to be identified very rapidly
so one possibility that I personally see is transmission of
infections in hospitals. So if you have had a hospital room that's had a
contagious patient in it perhaps the supervisor of (the cleaning
crew*-at #3/34:57)*could go through behind* *them - sample all the
surfaces and confirm that they are no longer able to detect anthrax, or
sepsis ...or pneumonia...in that room and its ready for the next patient
to go into and not worry about contracting  a new disease while in the
hospital.* *Possibly quality control in food packaging if your in a
location were you are processing lots of vegetables or really almost any
kind of food you could work out a system for sampling surfaces and then
confirming that, 'Oh, we got some form of E. coli present or no we
don't.'*

**Narrator**

Super Cloth could also help identify germs in the home. For instance,
salmonella from chicken - or other food borne bugs - could easily be
detected in the kitchen by a mere swipe of the cloth.

**Margaret Frey**

*Having a rapid yes/no response and the possibility that this could be
done by just the general public is another goal for this project.*

**Narrator**

The Cornell team wants to develop the fabric so that would it will
reveal a bright color upon identifying an unsafe bacterium.

**Margaret Frey on camera**

*Right now, it's a two-step process. One is collection. One is
detection. But ideally, we can move that to a one- step process that the
color would develop on capture of the target material and we don't think
it's going to be easy but we do think its going to be possible.
Detecting pathogens is definitely been possible but by incorporating
this nanotechnology, we got something that's very small, very portable
able to do a lot of work on a very small platform - a very a
little piece of fabric the end of  a Q-tip, something like this.* *This
interface between putting together the fiber science... and the
biological science has been one the exciting challenges in this
project.*