Silicone Oil in Textile Application

Let’s talk about silicone oil first

Silicone oil usually refers to the linear polysiloxane product that keeps liquid at room temperature. It is generally colorless (or light yellow), odorless, non-toxic, and non-volatile liquid. Their molecular weight is not high, and they are fluid at room temperature, so they are usually called silicone oils. It is generally not simply used, but made through a special formula, and is often used as an auxiliary material to produce a certain effect.

Generally speaking, there are three basic forms of silicone oil on the market: pure silicone oil, solution, and emulsion.

Pure silicone oil has very strong stability, heat resistance, frost resistance, good storage performance, high flash point and high ignition point, so there are relatively few storage and transportation problems.
In fact,silicone oil solution often needs to be diluted, and sometimes it is desirable to add active auxiliary agents (catalyst, cross-linking agent, etc.) to the solution in order to conveniently storage and use. Aliphatic, aromatic or chlorinated hydrocarbons can be used as solvents as required, and other kinds of solvents can only be used under special circumstances. Generally, the concentration of high molecular polysiloxane solution can only reach 35%, otherwise the viscosity will be too high.
A large part of silicone oil or products containing silicone oil are made into emulsion form. Compared with solvent silicone oil, it has the advantages of low price, non-flammable, and harmless to health. Different from the solvent type, all silicone emulsions are "oil-in-water" heterogeneous systems. Its external sealing phase is water phase. Silicone oil is dispersed in the water phase in very fine droplets, and it is easy to dilute with water to the required concentration. For application, the stability of this emulsion can be achieved by making the droplets as fine as possible and stabilizing the emulsifier.

According to its processing conditions, silicone oil can be divided into primary products and secondary products.

The former refers to silicone oil products before processing, including four categories of hydroxy silicone oil, silicone functional silicone oil, carbon functional silicone oil and inactive modified silicone oil. Among these four categories, the first two categories are conventionally called linear silicone oil, and the latter two are called modified silicone oil.

Secondary silicone oil products refer to greases, emulsions and solutions products, which use silicone oil as raw materials, mix thickeners, surfactants, solvents and additives, and are processed by specific processes, such as silicone grease, silicone paste, defoamer, release agent and isolating agent, etc.

The role of silicone oil in the textile industry

Silicone oil can be used as fabric softener, lubricant, waterproofing agent, finishing agent and so on in the textile and garment industry. In order to meet the high-end demand of textiles, chemical product manufacturers are also constantly developing silicone oils that can be used with various functional additives such as waterproofing agents, flame retardants, antistatic agents, and color fixing agents. In addition, in order to improve fabric performance, there are silicone products that can be used in the same bath with dyeing, silicone oil for cotton with a cool feeling, silicone products that can improve the feel of the fabric, and silicone deepening agents that can give fabric excellent deepening effect, good storage stability, and do not affect color fastness and handle. In addition to being used as additives in textiles to realize the functionalization of textiles, silicone products will also be applied to other fields in textiles, such as the coating of fabrics formed by the combination of silicone and polyurethane, the printing of fabrics formed by the polymerization of silicone and acrylic acid, and the waterproof coating of fabrics formed by the combination of silicone and organic fluorine.

XJY-706 and XJY-707 are silicone intermediates, usually used as silicone end capping agents, and can be used as waterproofing agents and softeners for natural and synthetic fabrics.You can click below to learn more.


XJY-706 1,1,3,3-TETRAMETHYLDISILOXANE (TMDSO)	XJY-707 HYDRIDE TERMINATED POLYDIMETHYLSILOXANE