Sheet-like material

Abstract

The present invention provide a sheet-like material having a highly soft texture, and further having high crease resistance while being soft. The sheet-like material of the present invention is a sheet-like material which includes a nonwoven fabric containing ultrafine fibers having an average single fiber diameter of 0.3 to 7 μm, and an elastomer, and having nap on a surface, in which the elastomer has a porous structure, and the porous structure has a proportion of micropores with a pore size of 0.1 to 20 μm of 60% or more in all pores.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This is the U.S. National Phase application of PCT / JP2017 / 046354, filed Dec. 25, 2017, which claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2017-009507, filed Jan. 23, 2017, the disclosures of these applications being incorporated herein by reference in their entireties for all purposes.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to a sheet-like material, particularly to a napped leather-like sheet-like material.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]It is widely known to obtain a suede-like or nubuck-like, napped leather-like sheet-like material by buffing with sandpaper a surface of a sheet-like material in which a base material such as a nonwoven fabric composed of fibers is impregnated with a polyurethane resin to stand the fibers. Desired properties of the napped leather-like sheet-like material can be arbitrarily and widely designed by combination of a base material composed of fibers and a polyurethane resin.[0004]For e...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]In view of the background of the prior art described above, an object of the present invention is to provide a napped leather-like sheet-like material having both a texture of excellent softness and high crease resistance while it is soft.

[0023]According to the present invention, a napped leather-like sheet-like material having both a highly soft texture and crease resistance can be obtained. Specifically, a napped leather-like sheet-like material having an elegant appearance obtained by buffing, and further having excellent softness and crease resistance can be obtained by the present invention. Here, the term “highly soft texture” means, in clothing use, that the sheet-like material can be tailored into a complicated three-dimensional shape and can provide good feeling of wearing by deformation along with the physical movement, and means, in use of furniture, automobile interior materials, or the like, that the sheet-like material can be molded or processed along with a complicated three-dimensional shape and can provide good feeling of use by flexibly following deformation caused, for example, when a person sits. The term “crease resistance” refers to an excellent recovery from the crease, and means that even if wrinkles are caused by applying a load, for example, a deformation caused upon the use as described above, the wrinkles disappear without leaving any trace after removing the load. It is necessary to apply appropriate elasticity to the sheet-like material in order to express the crease resistance, which is conflict with the softness, and thus it has been difficult to obtain both the softness and the crease resistance.

Problems solved by technology

In the use requiring the soft texture as in the clothing use, however, the softness has been still insufficient.

According to this proposal, however, synthetic leather composed of layers of nonporous polyurethane resins having various molecular weights and a fiber fabric has been studied in detail, but napped artificial leather having a soft texture and crease resistance has not been studied at all.

According to this proposal, a good texture has been attained by controlling pore sizes in layers of nonporous polyurethane resins having various molecular weights, and in portions close to the surface layer and the fibrous base layer, but coexistence of softness and crease resistance has not been studied at all, and softness is impaired because of porous polyurethane resin layer.

According to this proposal, however, when the pores inside the polyurethane resin layer have a large pore size of more than 20 μm, the thickness of the polyurethane resin layer between the pores is thick, so that an effect of improving the grindability of the polyurethane resin and an effect of improving softness are insufficiently exhibited.

Accordingly, it has been difficult to obtain sufficient softness in the use requiring flexible deformation along a complicated shape such as in clothing use.

It has been also difficult to obtain ultrafine and uniform pores.

According to this proposal, the material has a soft texture because of the porous structure and is uniform, but it has been difficult to have both softness and crease resistance due to remaining creases.

As described above, it has been very difficult to stably obtain a napped leather-like sheet-like material having both excellent softness and excellent crease resistance according to the conventional techniques.