Non-woven fabric finds a lot of utility in daily life. One of the prominent use of non woven fabric is to make face masks. The use of face masks has increased manifolds due to the advent of COVID-19. The pandemic has altered the way of life. The benefits of non woven fabric for face masks are many over other face mask-making materials.
The face mask is like a net for your face.
It is vital to understand the purpose of the face mask to determine the best material for making the masks. For example, we have mosquito nets at home, used to keep the mosquitoes out. The mesh of the mosquito net has to be acceptable to ensure no mosquito can enter.
Differences between melt-blown fabric and cloth
The two fabrics are formulated differently. The woven and knit materials are often made by tying strings from different formations together. Thus, cloth can be understood as a series of threads tied together.
Melt-blown fabric is a pile of fragile strands of plastic stacked on top of each other.
Why is cloth bad for making face masks?
One way of building a fine mesh to keep out the contaminants is to construct a woven cloth, making the fabric unbreathable. Stacking is another method. Air gets stuck in between the stacked layers of material, which makes it suffocating.
The melt-blown fabric does use a tight weave to make a fine mesh. Instead, a large stack of tiny pieces of thread is condensed to form a fine mesh, making it difficult for contaminants to pass through but is breathable.
The melt-blown fabric fibers are fragile. The finest silk threads are almost 10x times the melt-blown fibers in size.
What about the electrostatic charge?
The mechanical measures used to make the melt-blown fabric make the fabric durable, perfect for use, and breathable. The material is found to hold an electrostatic charge; this property improves filtration efficiency many times. Studies show the high efficacy of melt-blown fabrics as face masks.
The SEM analysis shows that cloth fabrics are less breathable and can make you feel suffocated even after a light jog or a fast walk. The melt-blown fabric face masks do not inhibit airflow to our lungs and are much more efficient at keeping the contaminants at bay.