Anyone in the textile industry reading trade publications is surely seeing the term “technical textiles” increasingly used. That’s because new developments in this area are coming fast and furiously, both in terms of the fabrics themselves and the finishes applied to them.

Technical textiles are textiles manufactured with function in mind, rather than aesthetics or decoration. They are already being used in a wide range of applications, everything from airplane parts and medical solutions to protective clothing and more efficient athletic wear, with new applications being developed every day.

We discussed one such application in a recent article about Purissimo from Devan Chemicals. In this case, it is a probiotic treatment applied to textile products that are infrequently washed to help reduce the volume of pet allergens. Infrequently washed because the washing process would remove the good bacteria that result when microcapsules of dormant probiotic are crushed, activating the bacteria which in turn eat the pet allergen proteins and grow into a colony that will continue to multiply and consume these proteins as long as they are present. It’s being used in things like carpets, mattresses, and pet beds.