Anisotropic Structural Microfibrous Personal Protective Equipment: Synergistic and Evaluation of Liquid Directional...

Personal protective equipment (PPE) plays a critical role in blocking the transmission of hazardous liquids and contaminants and serves as a robust protective barrier for safety. However, traditional PPE suffers from issues such as nonbiodegradability and liquid accumulation. Herein, a polylactic acid/paraffin@silica (PLA/PW@SiO₂) microfibrous PPE with a directional rough structure was developed via the melt-blown in situ stretching process. This directional rough structure, featuring an adjustable ordered distribution and groove embedding depth, significantly enhances the liquid directional slipping performance of the samples. Specially, the slipping angle of distilled water in machine direction (MD) reached 21°, much lower than that in 38° along cross direction (CD), and the differences in artificial sweat and synthetic blood slipping angles in MD and CD were 20 and 18°, respectively. Additionally, the liquid directional slipping index increased from 42.16 to 159.50%, demonstrating an excellent liquid directional slipping performance. Moreover, the fabric exhibits superior mechanical performance, with the tensile strength increasing by 124.8%. These findings indicate that the anisotropic structural PLA/PW@SiO₂ microfibrous fabrics with liquid directional slipping performance and superior mechanical strength hold significant application potential in multifunctional PPE.