Nanomaterials and Textiles

The terms “nano” and “nanomaterials” have come to be buzz words describing tremendous advances in research and development during the last decades [1,2,3,4]. In comparison, textiles—or, in general, conventional fiber-based materials—have been used for thousands of years and can arguably be considered traditional materials [5,6]. The creation of new functional products by the addition of nanomaterials has come to constitute an interesting development in research [7,8], with this including textile products gaining enhanced properties after the application of nanomaterials [9,10,11]. This major development in the field is reflected by the high number of scientific publications containing both the terms “nanomaterials” and “textiles”. A search on Google Scholar performed in October 2024 detected a high number of approximately 207,000 publications in this area. Furthermore, remarkable growth in the number of publications related to nanomaterials and textiles can be observed within the last 15 years (Figure 1). However, this research is not only related to new textile products but also to disadvantageous effects on health caused by nanomaterials in combination with textiles or released from textiles [12,13]. A prominent issue in this field of research is the release of so-called “nanoplastics” from textile products [14,15].