Why do we need meltblown nonwoven to make masks?

 Because meltblown nonwoven is an important material for the production of medical surgical masks and N95 masks, and it is the "heart" of masks. Taking a medical-surgical mask as an example, it is composed of a masked face and a tightening belt, and the mask face is divided into three layers: inner, middle, and outer. The inner layer is made of skin-friendly material: ordinary sanitary gauze or non-woven fabric; the middle layer is an isolation filter layer: ultra-fine polypropylene fiber meltblown material layer; the outer layer is a special material antibacterial layer: non-woven fabric or ultra-thin polypropylene melt Spray material layer.

Medical masks generally adopt a multi-layer structure, referred to as SMS structure: a single spunbond layer (S) on both sides, and a single or multiple meltblown layers (M) in the middle. The best material for the meltblown layer is melt Spray cloth. The main material that brings the virus filtering effect to the mask is the middle M layer-meltblown nonwoven fabric.

The meltblown nonwoven fabric is made of a polypropylene material called high melt index fiber. It is a kind of ultra-fine electrostatic fiber cloth, which can effectively use static electricity to absorb virus dust and droplets. This is also an important reason why masks can filter viruses. (If you don’t know whether your mask is anti-virus, just see if there is a meltblown cloth in the mask).

In fact, these three layers are all nonwoven fabrics, the raw materials are all polypropylene, but the production process is different. Among them, the fiber diameter of the spunbond layer on the inner and outer sides is relatively thick, about 20 microns; the fiber diameter of the meltblown layer in the middle is only 2 microns, which is made of a polypropylene material called high-melt fiber. It is fragile and cannot be washed with water or sprayed with alcohol. Even if it is wet and then dried, it will damage the fiber and cause loopholes. Viruses will pass through the loopholes, and the mask will lose its protective ability.