in this article, Amir briefly illustrates instant non-woven fabric aerosol spray apparatus and prospects
Technically, spray-on non-woven fabric apparatus is utilized to create non-woven fabric layers instantly via an aerosol spray delivered from compressed air spray gun or aerosol can, in which aerosol spray dries immediately upon air contant to create non-woven fabric layers.
Originally, spray-on non-woven fabrics were developed to be used as instant-medical wound patches. Currently, instant spray-on fabrics find niche in fashion design by employing such technique to gain media attention and brand promotion. Though no surprise that Bella Hadid’s spray dress made news as her video went viral on social media last week.
Formulation
Typically, an instant spray-on fabric apparatus is composed of natural or synthetic fibers, chemical binder, and volatile carrier. Therefore, fibers such as hydrophobic cotton, poly-propylene, poly-ethylene, and poly-amides are used besides dyed fibers or small quantities of dye to be added upon formulation.
The chemical binder is key component to bind fibers to the volatile carrier in which styrene isoprene block copolymers, hydrogenated butadiene styrene copolymers, poly-vinyl acetate, poly-vinyl butyrate, natural latex, or poly-vinyl alcohol are used.
In contrast, volatile carrier evaporates upon spraying as for low boiling points such as dimethyl ether hence pressurized within range from 3 bar to 8 bar inside an aerosol can, or diethyl ether via compressed air spray. In addition to dissolving binders, volatile carrier multilayers fabric upon topical application to an area of the skin.
Mechanism
Normally, volatile carrier evaporates immediately upon air contant before spray reaches skin surface thus fabric is formed as binder is left in solid form to bind fibers together forming fabric layers.
According to Chemiprobe, spray-on fabric apparatus used to spray Bella Hadid’s dress is probably made of polyamide-nylon 6 synthetic fibers with traces of hydrophobic cotton thus binds to polystyrene-polyisoprene block co-polymer, and most likely carried by volatile diethyl ether in which compressed air accelerates evaporation.
hydrophobic cotton : chemically-treated cotton fiber to resists water penetration hence retain hydrophobic properties via dip coating with chemicals such as alkyltrimethoxysilanes