Artificial leather and method for manufacturing the same

Abstract

Disclosed are an artificial leather that comprises two or more types of short fibers made of different components and thus exhibits superior texture, flexibility, breathability and fullness and enables great weight reduction, and a method for manufacturing the same.

The artificial leather includes a non-woven fabric having a fineness of 0.001 to 0.5 denier, and a polymeric elastomer impregnated in the non-woven fabric, wherein the short fibers are two or more types of polyester short fibers having different numbers of repeat units of —CH₂—.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to an artificial leather and a method for manufacturing the same. More specifically, the present invention relates to an artificial leather useful as an alternative to natural leather and a method for manufacturing the same.BACKGROUND ART[0002]An artificial leather is manufactured by impregnating a polymeric elastomer in a non-woven fabric comprising three-dimensionally entangled ultrafine fibers, which is widely utilized in a variety of applications such as shoes, clothes, gloves, miscellaneous goods, furniture and automobile interior materials due to natural leather-like soft texture and unique appearance.[0003]Such an artificial leather is manufactured using a variety of fibers such as polyethylene terephthalate fibers and polyamide fibers.[0004]However, a common artificial leather is made of short fibers containing a single component. Accordingly, the short fibers constituting the artificial leather exhibit similar mechanical ph...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]The present invention has the following effects.

[0015]The artificial leather according to the present invention comprises two or more types of polyester short fibers having different elastic recovery. Short fibers having relatively high elastic recovery form a spring-like structure during an entanglement process for forming a non-woven fabric.

[0016]The artificial leather of the present invention has pores exhibiting superior compressive elasticity (in a thickness direction) and being uniformly formed to have a predetermined size, as compared to an artificial leather only comprising polyethylene terephthalate (two repeat units of —CH2—) short fibers, since it partially comprises the spring-like structure. Accordingly, the present invention provides an artificial leather that has superior texture, flexibility, breathability and fullness and enables considerable reduction in weight.

[0017]Furthermore, this spring structure makes surface naps upright, enabling production of an artificial leather in which the difference in friction coefficient according to nap direction is minimized, as compared to a common artificial leather in which naps lie in one direction. Accordingly, the artificial leather of the present invention can reduce displeasure caused by the difference in friction property according to the nap direction.

[0018]Meanwhile, when a non-woven fabric was formed using only polyester short fibers having three or more repeat units (—CH2—), an interior spring-like structure is readily formed, but entanglement between short fibers is difficult, a density and mechanical strength of the non-woven fabric are deteriorated, and an artificial leather satisfying appearance, texture and physical properties required for artificial leather manufacture companies cannot be produced.

[0019]In addition, the non-woven fabric according to the present invention comprises polyester short fibers, thus exhibiting superior adhesiveness to the polymeric elastomer, for example, polyurethane. Accordingly, the artificial leather of the present invention has superior durability.

Problems solved by technology

Also, there is a problem of difficulty of realization of an artificial leather having satisfactory texture, fullness and flexibility due to differentiation in terms of interaction between short fibers.

However, these methods may deteriorate other properties of an artificial leather such as texture or appearance.