What are composite fabrics?_Outdoor Sports garment Manufacturer

What are composite fabrics?

Laminated fabric refers to bonding multiple layers of fabrics together, or laminating fabrics and polymers or other materials together to form a laminate with multiple functions. In recent years, research on laminated fabrics has mainly focused on water blocking, air permeability, conductivity, antistatic, electromagnetic wave protection, catalysis, temperature regulation properties, and laminated materials using laminated fabrics as reinforcement bases.

According to the materials used to bond fabrics, bonded fabrics can be divided into three categories: fabric/fabric bonding, polymer/fabric lamination, and metal/fabric bonding. From a technological perspective, fabric lamination can be achieved through fabric structure design, fabric lamination technology, PU coating technology, or through electroless plating, vacuum plating, and sputtering technology.

1. Design of fabric structure

The fit of woven fabrics and knitted fabrics can be achieved through reasonable design of fabric structure. For example, woven knitted fabrics made of glass fiber as warp and weft yarns and high-strength polyester as knitted yarn can be used in the field of industrial reinforcement materials. For example, polyethylene glycol is used as the dispersion medium and nano-silica is used as the dispersed phase particle to prepare a shear thickening liquid (STF), and a liquid lamination process is used to prepare a laminated fabric of STF/Nomex/ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fiber. , can be used for the preparation of efficient, lightweight and comfortable bulletproof materials.

2. Lamination technology

The direct lamination method of fabric is the lamination of fabric and fabric. The typical structure is composed of outer fabric, adhesive, middle film layer, adhesive, and inner fabric, which is often called laminated fabric. The material of the fabric layer can be natural fibers or chemical fibers such as polyester and nylon. The fabric used can be woven fabric, knitted fabric, or non-woven fabric. The middle layer is usually a film or fiber mesh structure. The raw materials of the membrane mainly include PVC, PU and polytetrafluoroethylene.

3. PU coating technology

Fabric PU coating usually refers to coating the polymer compound evenly on the surface of the fabric to form one or more layers of film on the surface of the fabric. It can not only improve the appearance and style of the fabric, but also increase the function of the fabric and make the fabric water-blocking. , water pressure resistance, air permeability, fire prevention, decontamination, and covering reflections and other extraordinary functions.

Using PU coating technology, conductive metal or metal oxide particles can also be added to the PU coating slurry to form a conductive PU coating on the surface of the fabric, so that the fabric can obtain properties such as conductivity, electromagnetic shielding, thermal conductivity, complete catalytic degradation, and wave absorption. , its main metals or metal oxides include silver, copper, iron oxides, titanium dioxide, etc. During the PU coating process, metal materials need to be refined into nanoparticles to ensure the formation of a uniform and strong conductive metal film on the surface of the fabric.

4. Aggregation method

According to the performance requirements of the fabric, laminating some polymer materials and fabrics can produce laminated fabrics with certain extraordinary functions. Commonly used polymer materials include polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene, polyurethane, etc. For example, a simple and easy liquid phase in-situ polymerization method is adopted, using polyester fabric and nylon fabric as the matrix, and aniline and pyrrole monomers are polymerized in situ on the surface of the fabric to form polyaniline and polypyrrole conductive layers, which can produce good flexibility. There are also conductive fabrics with better conductivity.

5. Chemical plating technology

Metal fibers and general fabric fibers can be blended or interlaced into chemical fiber fabrics to prepare metal fitting fabrics. This type of conformal fabric can also be obtained through electroless plating technology, which uses chemical reactions to reduce metals into atoms or molecules and deposit them on the surface of fibers or yarns. According to the different plating metals, it is divided into electroless nickel plating, electroless copper plating, electroless cobalt plating, electroless tin plating, electroless silver plating, platinum and other precious metal plating.

6. Vacuum plating and sputtering technology

Vacuum plated fabric is a metallized laminated fabric obtained by depositing metal on the surface of the fabric after forming vapor under vacuum conditions. For example, electron beam evaporation technology is used to produce iron oxide/quartz fiber laminated fabrics, which can be used in broadband wave-transmitting materials.

Sputtering fabric is a laminated fabric made by using high voltage of cathode and anode electrodes under ultra-vacuum conditions to accelerate inert gas ions to hit the metal target, and the released metal atoms or molecules are attached to the fabric. This technology can be used to prepare thin and light glass fiber/silver laminated fabrics, which can be used as radar absorbing materials. However, due to the high cost of sputtering finishing, it can only be produced in small quantities, which limits its promotion and application to a certain extent.