About Microfiber Towels
Microfiber promises to be the next generation in textiles. Microfiber towels are in high demand for their remarkable softness and absorbency as well as for their durability and stain resistance. Does this Spark an idea?
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Origin
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Dr. Miyoshi Okamoto developed microfibers in Japan by in the early 1970s.
Composition
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Microfiber towels consist of synthetic polymers, most commonly polyester and nylon in a ratio of 80-to-20.
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Size
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Units called denier rate the fineness of fibers; the smaller the number, the finer the fabric. Cotton has a denier rating of 200, while human hair has a rating of 20, and silk has a rating of 8. High-quality microfibers have a rating between 0.01 and 0.02, meaning they are 100 times finer than a human hair.
Structure
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Each filament of microfiber is split nine to 16 times in a pie formation, creating hundreds of thousands of microscopic hooks per square inch. The split fibers then form a woven, loop formation, enabling the towel to absorb six to seven times its weight.
Quality
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Inexpensive microfiber towels use unsplit fibers, and, as a result, these towels do not perform as well as high-quality towels. The reason for this difference in quality is that the machine that manufactures unsplit fibers costs less than $100,000, and the machine that splits microfibers can cost more than $1 million.
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References
- Photo Credit Image by Fotolia.com, courtesy of Steve Lovegrove
