
Nano-enhanced textiles clean themselves with light - dnetesn
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-nano-enhanced-textiles.html
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Qiasfah
"When the nanostructures are exposed to light, they receive an energy boost
that creates "hot electrons". These "hot electrons" release a burst of energy
that enables the nanostructures to degrade organic matter."

Organic matter, like our skin?

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alexbock
The article doesn't go into much detail, but it may be safe for scale reasons,
like the oligodynamic effect where metals like silver kill bacteria but can be
safely worn on the skin. The research paper [0] indicates that they coated
cotton with copper and silver.

[0]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admi.201500632/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admi.201500632/abstract)

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salgernon
May I recommend "The man in the white suit", a British comedy from the 50s
that predicted this development.

    
    
      http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0044876/
    

It's fun, but also a time capsule of capital vs labor in the 1950s.

The evolution of the home clothes washer pretty much eliminated the half of
the labor argument: people don't send most of their laundry out to be cleaned
much anymore.

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korethr
This might lessen the need, but I don't think it will entirely eliminate the
need for washing clothes. Not all substances that that soil clothes are
organic. There's the mineral components of dirt, oils, other chemicals, etc.

