Although Lady Macbeth was referring to blood and not wine–as in this case–she surely could have used this new technology that could make wool garments self cleaning and longer lasting, even through food and wine spills.

Researchers in Australia and China may have developed a somewhat self-cleaning fabric when wool or silk is coated with tiny “nano” particles of a type of titanium dioxide–the same substance that is used as pigment in white paint and the light reflecting ingredient in sunscreen.

According to an article in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, Dr. Walid Daoud of Monash University, Victoria, Australia and others prepared fabrics with and without nanoparticle coating at 5 nanometers thick, 5 billionths of a meter, of anatase titanium dioxide.

“The self-cleaning technology in our work uses titanium dioxide photocatalyst that when triggered by light, it decomposes dirt, stains, harmful microorganisms and so on,” says Dr Daoud.

The researchers then stained the fabric samples with red wine. After 20 hours of exposure to simulated sunlight, the coated fabric showed almost no signs of the red stain, whereas the untreated fabric remained deeply stained.