A reloadable Janus cotton fabric for integrating personal thermal management and bio-protection

Reloadable β-cyclodextrin and terpineol system enables regenerable bio-protection. • Janus design integrates sweat transport, evaporative cooling and heat spreading. • Scalable textile processing affords biocompatible multifunctional cotton fabric. Global climate change and public health emergencies have raised urgent demand for multifunctional textiles that integrate thermal comfort and hygienic safety. This work reports a Janus cotton fabric combining functions of passive cooling, unidirectional moisture transport, and regenerable antimicrobial protection, aiming to overcome the challenges of multifunctional integration and durability enhancement in textile materials. Specifically, on the fabric's outer surface, β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) is covalently grafted onto cotton fibers to enable controlled release and repeatable loading of bioactive terpineol (TP) via host-guest inclusion, while preserving a hydrophilic surface. On the reverse side, hydroxylated boron nitride (h-BN-OH) nanosheets are immobilized by silane mist treatment to construct a thermally conductive, hydrophobic inner layer. The resulting asymmetric Janus fabric exhibits a unidirectional moisture transport index of 1270%, a maximum instantaneous heat flux of 0.275 J/cm 2 ·s, and approximately 10 °C cooling for simulated skin under outdoor solar irradiation. Moreover, it achieves 99.99% inactivation efficiency against Escherichia coli , Staphylococcus aureus , and Phi6 phage, and its protective performance is recoverable by reloading TP. This approach enables the integration of thermal-moisture management capability and microbicidal bioactivity in one Janus fabric, offering a practical strategy for developing high-performance personal thermal management and hygiene-protective textiles. Download: Download high-res image (118KB) Download: Download full-size image