Softening & Hydrophobicity

A super-hydrophobic (water repellant) character is increasingly required for high-performance technical textiles in order to attain effective liquid repellence, self-cleaning, uni-directional liquid transport, or to create barrier coatings on fiber surfaces. Accordingly, numerous novel approaches to decrease the surface free energy of fibers have been studied in the last years, either employing wet-chemical finishes based on modern chemical developments such as silane chemistry, nanocomposite structures, or physically applied thin layers. Similar to other branches, textile researchers have also tried to mimic the extreme water repellence of several plant and animal surfaces. POLLY PUF has attained a market position due to high water repellence or even oil repellence, chemical finishes imparted by it to technical textiles.

Chemical conditioning mostly fail to withstand influences such as mechanical stress — e.g. abrasion, high tensile forces —, climate, aggressive chemical environments, and high temperatures, to which technical textiles are subjected to in use. However, POLLY PUF has proven its performance time and over again to the industry.