Artificial leathers usually are composites consisting of a fabric layer and coating layers. The fabric provides strength, while the coating provides a leather-like surface. Typically, fabric and coating consist of different materials, making recycling virtually impossible. But modern sustainable products should allow full material recycling or be biodegradable. The solution discussed here is to make artificial leather from one material only which is biodegradable at the same time. We want to showcase a prototype of such an artificial leather, consisting only of Polybutylene succinate (PBS) melt-spun fibers and a PBS coating layer.
Using commercially available PBS, multifilament partially oriented yarn (POY) melt spinning trials have been performed with winding speeds up to 3000 m/min. The POYs have been processed to flat drawn yarns, crimped yarns and staple fibers thereof. From these yarns, three types of fabrics have been made: Knits, wovens, and staple fiber nonwovens. The fabrics have been successfully coated to form the first prototypes of PBS-based, monocomponent artificial leather.