Design of Special Purposes Products Made of Nanomodified Leather

The most notable changes in shoes during use occur in its volume and upper. Thus, by bearing on foot beams, bending in the metatarsophalangeal joints, they widen in this area. At that, footstep changes the position and pushes against the shoe upper parts, which stretch and then shrink. All these multiple deformations cause the wear of the shoe upper parts. The quality of a product and consumer characteristics of uppers material depend on the adhesive strength of the leather coating and the properties of coating compositions. The priority of improving the leather properties is high-frequency (HF) low-pressure plasma processing. Samples of buffer dry leather and grain leather were subjected to high-frequency plasma treatment under reduced pressure by using a radio frequency (RF) plasma with a discharge power (P) of 0.2 to 1.8 kW and a duration of exposure (tau) up to 7 min. The analysis of morphological changes of nano-modified leather structure was carried out using multifunctional Rigaku SmartLab X-ray diffractometer. Research results show that RF-plasma treatment increases the adhesion of the coating film to the leather uppers and resistance to abrasion and repeated bending of uppers, which define the ability of material to preserve its consumer properties and characterize longer safety of special purpose footwear form during its wearing.