A new high-tech fabric, developed by scientists at Stanford University, could make you feel cool as well as looking cool as you head outdoors for the summer months.  According to the LA Times, the new material will block the warming rays from the sun, and at the same time, allow the body to release heat normally trapped in your clothes more efficiently than even cotton garments.

The new design was tested by draping some of the material around a sensing device that was designed to simulate the human skin and placing the tester in the sun on a hot day.  The sensing device with the new nanoporous polyethylene fabric around it only registered a 0.8 degree Celsius rise in temperature of the simulated skin.  Quite a difference from the increase of 3.5 degrees when covered with cotton fabric, or even the 2.9 degree rise in temperature when covered in commercially available polyethylene.

In non-scientific terms, you would feel as if you were standing in the shade without a shirt when wearing the newly-designed fabric, according to the article.

But the new material will not be limited to making your wardrobe cooler.  It may one day be used in construction materials, such as tents, buildings and even vehicles.  Svetlana V. Boriskina, a MIT nonoengineer, wrote in an accompanying essay on the fabric the new design could pave the way for a reduction in the use of air conditioning across the world, adding people may be able to raise their thermostats.  Boriskina estimated the energy required to cool a building may fall as much as 45 percent, if the new fabric can be incorporated into the building’s design.

The research team at Stanford developed an polyethylene fabric with pores spacing 50 to 1,000 nanometers across, which allows infrared radiation, including the heat from the skin, to pass through while scattering sunlight striking the material’s surface.  The new fabric reflected almost four times as much visible light as normal polyethylene.

But don’t go tossing your current wardrobe in the good will box just yet.  Boriskina writes much more research will need to be done to bring the technology to the fashion markets, adding there may be ways to reach the same result with finely woven conventional fabrics as well.  Dyes and pigments necessary for today’s designs will need to be researched also.

The findings from the research team’s work were published in the journal Science.