Introduction

Since ages, man has quest to search for new things. His thirst for knowledge opens up various doors for new innovations. These innovations get complex with time to time and sciences add new dimensions even in textile industry.

If we peep into the historic scale, it started with simple hand-woven fabric passing through handlooms, going up with the automatic looms and machinery and now stretches up to infinity with the help of technology like Nanotechnology and biotechnology.

Life is getting more complex, so all things need more revolutionary changes to match the standards of the survival of man in more diverse situations. This is true for the whole textile industry. Day by day, new things add their values in the textile industry ranging from fabric making to new developments in machinery, threads, and design pattern, laundry washing and even in technical skills. Some of the new developments in various fields in textile are as follows:

Fabric

The Electrical conducting fabric is a new innovation in the field of smart textiles. These kinds of textiles have been created by coating of conducting polymers on the surface of the fabric. This could be either conducting yarns/fibers as a mixture component of yarn.

The different processes of conductive coatings can be developed through evaporative deposition, electrolyte plating, coating with a conductive polymer and sputtering, loading or filling fibers and carbonizing.

To control the Electro Magnetic Emissions and shield sensitive electronics from unwanted Electro Magnetic Emissions, cotton fabrics are saturated with polypyrrole and polyaniline. The fabrics have peizoresistive properties which are coated with conducted polymer polyrrole. A mixture of carbon and rubber also has piezoresistive properties and can be used for detecting the local strain on the fabric.

Elelectro textiles are garments or fabrics which have electronics woven into them. E-textiles have high physical flexibility in size. These electro textiles are a combination of technology, electronics and textile structures. Some electronic components are built in thin flexible fabric materials. Polymer wires are also used to make fabric flexible and durable. For use in the medical field, some jackets are also developed which are made with sensors and actuators. These kinds of materials are known as Interactive textiles or Smart textiles.

One new emergence is the wide use of Polyurethane. Polyurethane is a chain of organic units of urethane and thus, it is a polymer. Polyurethane is used in making synthetic fibers. Polyurethane is an elastomer and when used in fiber, it gives high performance. High-performance polyurethane foam is used in basketball sneakers.

Japan has always been known for its advanced research in the area of technology in each and every aspect. Recently, it applied ages-old historian techniques on natural fibers in producing a fabric which has contemporary touch in material with the advanced use of techno-culture. The use of rusted iron nails, thin copper plates and sheet metal used with traditional materials like silk, linen and cotton is also a new emergence by Japan.

Organic Leather

After organic fabric and dyes, now it is the trend of organic leather. Organic does not mean 100% environment-friendly, but it is made up without using any synthetic material. These organic materials are known as eco-friendly materials. The volume of people using organic leather is rising day by day. According to the Organic Trade Association, an industry group based in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in the year 2005, consumer sales of organic fiber for fabrics and other things was $160 million and was up by 44% than the previous year.

Demand is still rising and reaching to a higher scale. The Organic Trade Association has standards for textiles and it has banned the used of toxic dyes in fabric, but it is not necessary that the cotton dyed with organic dyes is never processed by inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.

In January 2007, the Organic Trade Association adopted new standards for textile processing. It is also developing a special logo for organic textiles. According to the standards, the processing of chemicals and heavy metals is not allowed, but synthetic sewing thread is allowed.

Dyes and dyeing methods

In the field of textile dyes, one of the latest innovations is conductive ink. This conductive ink can be produced by adding Copper (Cu), Carbon (C), Nickel (Ni), Silver (Ag) and Gold (Au) in conventional printing inks. This ink has the capability of electricity conductance.

Another new innovation is eco-friendly dyes or natural dyes and they do not contain any material which is harmful to nature or human beings.

One more recent innovation is bale dyeing. This involves the fibers in the form of raw bales as they are directly obtained from the suppliers. Then these bales are put into a cage which is specially designed for this. Every cage has a capacity of four bales. The cage is then placed in the dye kier as usual and the dyeing takes place as in the conventional method. In this process, the bales are hydro-extracted or vacuum-extracted to remove the extra moisture. This is a very economical method and very useful when the product range is limited.

Technology

Change is always the trend in the field of textile machinery and techniques. A new evolution came in the textile industry when Rotors took the place of spindles in spinning and shuttleless looms took the place of conventional looms in weaving. It changed the shape of the whole textile industry. Better quality yarn was produced by Rotors and better quality fabric by shuttleless looms. Day by day, technology adds more with computer programming to robot.

The recent innovation in the field of textile machinery is new AEROpeicing technology on the R 40 rotor spinning machine. This improves the end products manufactured. The new AEROpiecing technology was developed three years ago by Rieter for its R 40 automatic rotor spinning machine. These machines are equipped with robots which are with updated software to get high precision in spinning. The yarn produced by this technology has no faults and high visible impact even through the end-product. AEROpeicing technology is different from conventional piecing methods.

This technology opens up new possibilities for the process ability of materials and adds quality advantage also.

Nanotechnology

As the world expands more macroscopically, science is doing innovations more microscopically. Nanotechnology is one of them. Nano stands for one billionth metre and is a prefix.

1nm=10-9 m

Nanotechnology is used for all the developments where the size can be counted in nanometers. Thus, nanomaterials are those in which one dimension can measure in nano range. Nanotechnology is used in textiles also.

It is used to improve the performance of fabric. It creates lightweight and high-strength fibers ranging from 50 to 300 nm. Nanotechnology also gives antibacterial performance, especially effects on macro-organisms such as Staphylococcus Aureus.

Nano fibers are made up of textiles which have fillers of nano-size materials. Some nano-size fillers are nanotubes (CNT), nanofibres (GNF) and nano particles like clay, metal oxides and carbon black. Nanotechnology gives properties to the fiber like superior Gas Barrier properties at low loadings, thermal stability, enhanced fire retardancy and electrical or thermal conductivity. Nanotechnology is used to improve the quality of textiles at the molecular level and it increases fabric durability and performance.

The impact of new innovations

The innovations in the industry directly affect the market share of that company in the economy. This is true for the textile industry also. New technology improves the quality of production with the minimum use of time and manpower. As a result, it increases the capital share in the Indian market and in global market too. This directly affects the economic developments of the country.

Innovative machinery directly effected the change that the textile market in high wage countries have shrunk because of increased competitive scenario from firms of low-wage countries. It is very difficult to find the exact figures of how much increase is there in the market share because of new innovative approaches applied to it because there are many variables which affect the rate of increase in the market share. But it is for sure that every new technology adds value in the growth of the country and this is true for new applications and developments in the textile industry.

New technology directly affects the gross income than total capacity. It is always very difficult to count the exact figures of profit gained by only one new technology application, so the assumption percentage is the only data available to check the growth rate by the applied new technology, but it is for sure that new innovations and technologies are opening more doors for more advanced search.

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