Auxetic Textiles for Enhanced Healthcare

Engineers from Exeter University and surgeons from University College London Hospitals are collaborating on research into the benefits of auxetic textiles to improving healthcare and quality of life for patients. Auxetic materials get fatter when they are stretched, whereas most materials get thinner when you stretch them. Possible areas where auxetic materials will improve our lives include compression bandaging (to treat, for example, leg ulcers) and dental hygiene, and successes in these areas could easily translate into sports garments to improve performance or protection for athletes. Auxetic textiles have interesting energy properties and unusual drape and stretch qualities.

Auxetic materials exhibit the counterintuitive property of getting wider when stretched ? they have a negative Poisson?s Ratio. Recent developments in auxetic textiles have created new opportunities to provide enhanced healthcare products to improve patient compliance and self-management. Researchers from the Universities of Exeter (engineering) and University College London (life sciences) wish to collaborate on the exploitation of such textiles to (in the first instance) graduated compression hosiery and dental care and to explore further potential benefits in the field. A 4-month interdisciplinary programme is proposed, to ?pump-prime? full-scale research activity and to prove concepts.