Teijin Fibers Limited, the core company of the Teijin Group's polyester fibers business, announced today that it has developed a new stain-resistant polyester fabric that offers, for the first time in the world, both water absorption to eliminate stickiness and oil repellency to resist oil-based soiling.

The new material, planned to be marketed as a comfortable, stain-resistant fabric for all seasons, will be used for sportswear, uniforms and fashionable clothing such as blouses, cut and sewn clothing, and slacks that require both oil repellency and sweat absorption. Teijin Fibers will begin selling the new fabric in time for spring and summer 2012 sportswear and apparel.

Innerwear such as shirts and cut and sewn clothing will benefit greatly from being able to absorb water and sweat, while stubbornly repelling oil-based stains from sebum, cosmetics, etc. and easily shed such stains through washing.

Teijin Fibers' innovative new material also offers an unprecedentedly soft texture because its special new coating is formed on each individual fiber, rather than the fabric as a unit.

The key to this breakthrough was Teijin Fibers' leveraging of proprietary fiber processing and nanotechnologies to succeed in covering the fiber surface with a 100-nanometer coating that consists of separate hydrophilic and oil-repellent layers. When sweat or other moisture contacts the fabric, water content is selectively absorbed and quickly spread to the hydrophilic layer, whereas oil is repelled and later can be easily washed off.

Polyester is essentially hydrophobic, so it neither absorbs water nor repels oil-based grime. Existing water-repellent and oil-repellent materials present problems, such as loss of breathability and texture, because the coating is applied only to the top surface of the fabric, rather than each individual fiber.