All materials are made up of atoms,which vibrate. These vibrations, or 'phonons', or are responsible,for example, for how electric charge and heat is transported in materials. Vibrations of metals, or semiconductors,and insulators in are well studied; however, now materials are being nanosized to bring better performance to applications such as displays, and sensors,batteries, and catalytic membranes. What happens to vibrations when a fabric is nanosized has until now not been understood.
Source: phys.org