Technical Textiles

摘要

Antimicrobial functionality is one of the strongest growth areas in the technical textile sector due to the strong and growing consumer demand for freshness, hygiene and increased technical functionality of textiles. Silver is the active ingredient of choice for achieving antmicrobial functionality in technical textiles. While a variety of silver-containing additives are available for achieving antimicrobial functionality, very few are suitable to the unique demands of textile applications. In particular, for synthetic fibre production, conventional silver additives are often too large, disperse poorly, are too abrasive, lead to poor mechanical properties and often show poor wash durability of the final fiber. Additionally these are often too expensive for the level of performance delivered. HeiQ materials has developed a silver additive that overcomes the disadvantages of conventional silver additives. This additive is a novel nanocomposite material featuring metallic nano silver particles embedded within a porous inorganic oxide matrix. The silver nanoparticles give a high antimicrobial effect and long-lasting performance. The matrix particles in a well dispersed state while the small size of the overall structure is easily incorporated in synthetic fibres. A major advantage of this structure is that the material displays excellent dispersion in a wide variety of polymers and liquids thereby enabling straight-forward integration in fibre spinning and textile finishing treatments.