Artificial leather has a soft texture, comfortable to wear, beautiful and durable, and strong warmth retention. It has the characteristics of moisture absorption, breathability, and good color fastness. If coated with special substances, it also has waterproof properties.

Artificial leather is mothproof, odorless, iron-free, and of stable size. It is suitable for making spring and autumn coats, outerwear sportswear, and other clothing and decorative items, as well as shoes, gloves, hats, and so on. Common types of artificial leather include artificial leather and synthetic leather. A type of imitation leather fabric made by coating polyvinyl chloride resin (PVC) on woven, knitted, or non-woven fabrics, and finishing it through processes such as calendering.

According to the structure of the plastic layer, it can be divided into ordinary leather and foam artificial leather. The latter is based on ordinary leather, using foaming agents as a complexing agent to form many continuous, small and uniform bubble structures in the polyvinyl chloride resin layer, thereby making the resulting artificial leather soft and elastic, similar to real leather. The surface of synthetic leather is mainly made of polyurethane, and the base material is non-woven fabric made of polyester, cotton, polypropylene, etc. Its front and back are very similar to leather and have a certain degree of breathability. Synthetic leather has a beautiful luster and is less prone to mold and insect damage, making it closer to natural leather than ordinary synthetic leather. Synthetic leather has a smooth surface, consistent thickness, color, and strength, and is superior to natural leather in terms of waterproofing, acid and alkali resistance, and microbial resistance.

Synthetic leather was first successfully studied by DuPont in 1963, and is polyurethane synthetic leather (referred to as PU synthetic leather). This type of synthetic leather uses synthetic fiber nonwoven fabric as the base, reinforced with fabric in the middle, and immersed in a polyurethane elastomer solution similar to the composition of natural leather collagen fibers. Due to the capillary effect formed by the interweaving of nonwoven fibers, which is conducive to the absorption and migration of moisture, synthetic leather can partially exhibit the respiratory characteristics of natural leather

In the 1970s, nonwoven fabrics underwent processes such as needle punching and bonding, resulting in a lotus shaped cross-section and hollow fiber like substrate, achieving a porous structure that meets the requirements of natural leather mesh structure; The surface layer of synthetic leather can already achieve a micro porous polyurethane layer, which is equivalent to the grain surface of natural leather, thus gradually approaching the appearance and internal structure of PU synthetic leather with natural leather, and other physical properties are also close to the indicators of natural leather.