Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Self-Cleaning Fabric

Intro (not on tape):
When the noodle soup you're slurping splashes on your shirt, or the wine you've had a bit much of winds up in your lap, you're probably headed for the laundry. But maybe not for long -- if a chemist in Hong Kong is successful in his research.
Jacob Adelman tells why.

(SCRIPT 1)
In his laboratory at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Kowloon, John Xin, a 41-year old Shanghai native, is on the verge of a breakthrough that could revolutionize the clothing industry.

ACT 1: Xin 1
IN: This is one…
OUT: what is inside.
TT: 0:08
This is one is our synthesis lab, you can come in and have a look at what is inside.

AMB 1: Lab (keep under)

ACT 2: Xin 2
IN: That is the film cover…
OUT: lot of tubes.
TT: 0:05
That is the film cover, you also see a lot of glasswares and a lot of tubes.

(SCRIPT 2)
But there are some familiar-looking bottles and jars along with the test tubes and beakers.

ACT 3: Xin 3
IN: Well this is tomato
OUT: soy sauce.
TT: 0:08
So this is tomato ketchup, this is wine, French wine, the fruit juice, apple juice and this is soy sauce.

(SCRIPT 3)
All likely to ruin a freshly laundered shirt. Xin uses them to gauge his distance from the breakthrough he's pursued for the past year: fabrics that clean themselves. Xin and his colleagues dab the samples on treated swathes of cotton, then put the cotton under ultraviolet rays that simulate sunlight. If Xin's successful, light will someday vaporize dirt, stains and even funky smells on clothing made using his lab's technology.

(fade out AMB 1)

If the idea seems vaguely familiar, you might be remembering this:

AMB 2: Machine

Art anticipated science in a 1951 British comedy called The Man in the White Suit. Alec Guinness played a scientist who invents something similar.

ACT 4: Film dialogue 1
IN: He made
OUT: lasts forever.
TT: 0:04
He made a cloth that doesn't get dirty and it lasts forever.

(SCRIPT 4)
The fabric Xin is inventing won’t last forever. And it does get dirty, it just doesn’t stay that way for long. His technology uses a chemical reaction fueled by the energy in light to break down organic stains. It does this by coating the fabric with titanium dioxide, which is already used in toilets and bathroom tiles. Advances in nanotechnology -- manipulating structures on the molecular level -- allow a coating that's thin enough to feel natural. Xin’s contribution is a process that enables titanium dioxide to be applied to a heat-sensitive fabric like cotton without disintegrating it. The process is now being patented in the United States. And it seems to work.

AMB 3: Lab

Back in the lab, Xin holds up two small jars he filled earlier with organic blue dye. In one jar, he put a swath of treated fabric, in the other a piece of ordinary cotton. He exposed both to ultraviolet rays for 20 hours.

ACT 5: Xin 4
IN: You can see
OUT: decomposed by the fabric.
TT: 0:16
You can see without treatment there's no decomposition of the colors.
And with this one with the self-cleaning fabric you see that the color is much, much lighter.

Reporter: Yeah, it's just a blue, slight blue tint.

So that means almost all of the blue dye has been decomposed by the fabric.

(SCRIPT 5)
Xin's still fine-tuning the process to work on real world substances like mustard, wine, and soy sauce. But he says fabric companies are already keen to use the technology.
It looks like Xin's going to have better luck than the scientist in The Man in the White Suit, who was no match for the clothing manufacturers and launderers afraid of being put out of work.

ACT 6: Film dialogue 2
Why can't you scientists leave things alone.

(SCRIPT 6)
This is Jacob Adelman in Hong Kong.