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Taiwanese manufacturer GS introduces Compo-SiL vegan leather fabric

20 May '21

3 min read

Pic: Compo-SiL

Taiwanese manufacturer General Silicones (GS) has introduced its patented Compo-SiL vegan leather fabric and says it overcomes the barrier of silicone rubber's chemical inertness. With this patented technology, textile and product designers can quickly apply the vegan leather material to textiles, metals, and other surfaces using standard adhesives.

Untreated silicone rubber-based leather is hard to apply to any surfaces due to its chemical inertness. Thanks to over 50 years of silicone manufacturing experience, GS developed a technology to add a micrometre thin layer of water-based Polyurethane (PU) material on the inner side of the silicone leather.

The PU layer serves as an interface to further process the vegan leather with standard adhesives to textiles or different substrates. As the sole purpose of the PU layer is to allow adhesion, it is ultra-thin, effectively minimising the PU plastic content of Compo-SiL vegan leather to a significantly low value.

GS modifies the outer layer of the vegan leather to the customer's specifications. Modifications include embossment, colours, and thickness of the fabric to match the touch and feel of natural leather products and additional requirements of the planned application.

Silicone has already been proven to be harmless to the environment. The solvent-free production process of GS silicone leather has a low ecological footprint and does not create or use dangerous chemicals during production, use, or disposal. Compo-SiL vegan leather is not only an attractive alternative to traditional faux and animal leather but to other vegan leather products.

Slowing down the aging of products and prolonging the product replacement cycle adds significant economic and ecological benefits to final products. The properties of silicone give Compo-SiL leather far better durability than other leather alternatives. The excellent combination of silicone's chemical and mechanical characteristics, like excellent thermal stability, high water repellency, resistance to ozone, UV, and other oxidative degradations, make Compo-SiL vegan leather a superior material.

Protecting products and apparel with Compo-SiL can prolong product lifetime to a much larger extent than plastic-based products would do.

Silicone-based vegan leather products offer distinct benefits compared to natural leather, plastic, and alternatives with high PU content. Starting from durability, excellent elastic properties, chemical inertness, and low carbon footprint, make Compo-SiL vegan leather an excellent leather alternative. Having silicone as the principal constituent of Compo-SiL vegan leather allows the material to be easily adapted to incur properties like flame retardancy and anti-bacterial qualities. In addition, Compo-SiL vegan leather can be made with diverse coloured surfaces and textures depending upon the requirements. Glossy and matt surface properties are easily obtained along with unique textures.

Starting with sustainable, eco-friendly silicone material and the possibilities of numerous surface modifications and functionalisations, Compo-SiL vegan leather gives designers enhanced design freedom to bring their conceptual design into a sustainable vegan product for any industry. Compo-SiL vegan leather supports roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing. Production can be scaled up quickly with growing demand. Integration of Compo-SiL vegan leather with other textiles is achieved using exiting R2R processes without requiring changes to existing production lines or supply chain changes by the textile manufacturer. Compo-SiL vegan leather can also be modified to provide a smart touch surface, and the integration with electronics is easy due to the PU interfacial layer.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (SV)