By: Prof. T.K.Sinha, Yogita Agrawal, Rupa Mohanta
and Rupali Kapoor

ABSTRACT

As we enter 21st century, technical advances are dramatically influencing the world of fibers, fabrics and textiles. Today, technology can provide us with fabrics that imitate and actually improve upon nature's best fibers. In the next millennium, textiles will not just be an extension or simple alternatives to natural or synthetic fibers, but will provide superior functionality in broad and emerging sectors of the economy from space to super conductivity and agriculture to geotextile. This will be accomplished through modern business strategies for enhanced stakeholder value and highly efficient production schemes with no adverse impact on the environment and development of precisely specified molecules for new textile platforms.

INTRODUCTION

We are living in a world in which technology is advancing at such an astonishing rate that most of us have difficulty comprehending the overall impact it has, and will continue to have, on our lives. Cloning of adult mammals, World Wide Web, smart materials, high-speed processors and wonder drugs continue to dazzle us almost on a daily basis. The textile industry has kept pace and technology today can provide fabrics that go well beyond the best that nature has to offer. It is, indeed, a narrow view to think of textiles as a fixed discipline of making "strings." It is much more diverse than that and most importantly; it is in a state of flux in response to changing needs of society and new innovations. The inherent characteristics of new textiles underpin the functional and aesthetic qualities of these many and varied applications from the world of fashion to agriculture, medical, aerospace, reinforced composites and architecture. There has been rapid growth in polymer, material, information and biological sciences. The advance, in these adjacent sciences and their inevitable interface, will catalyze the conceptualization of tomorrow's textiles. This concept of interdisciplinary research, development and product innovations will lead to new textile platforms for the next millennium.

Fibers that have ease of care and natural-like aesthetics have been major themes in recent decades, with high performance and specialty fibers taking on particular significance. Fiber and fabric tests, critical to product quality have relied largely on destructive, off-line methods. Advances in testing and quality control promise to have a major impact on first pass product yields and product quality.

___________________________________________________________________________

DEVELOPMENTS OF NEW FIBERS

SOYABEAN PROTEIN FIBRE (SPF)

Production:

Soybean protein fiber (SPF) is a kind of regenerative plant fiber. It is made by means of wet spinning after extracting spherical protein from soybean residue with oil off biochemically and changing the space frame of the protein by adding functional agent. SPF is a kind of environment protecting product which dose no harm to the environment, atmosphere, water and human body during its process of production.