Put Your Tyvek® to The Test - Material structure

Good... day to all of you out there. Tytonius is the name, science is the game... huhuh... Yeah, that’s me... in my lab, ready to perform some enlightening research on those three protective coveralls behind me: microporous film, SMS and Tyvek. Allow me to summarize what I found out about their material structure. This is microporous film magnified 500 times. It consists of two components: a polyethylene film with microscopic pores in it, and a substructure. Only the film provides a protective barrier... and it’s a mere two hundredths of a millimetre thick. My second coverall sample is SMS. The barrier here is provided by the layer of meltblown polypropylene in the middle, about one tenth of a millimetre thick. It’s dense, but not so strong which is why a layer of spunbonded polypropylene is applied on either side. This is a top view of Tyvek. You can clearly make out the chains of fine continuous high-density polyethylene fibres that form a dense web, a result of DuPont’s unique production process. From the side, you can see there are no supporting layers. All of the material, one tenth of a millimetre thick, not just part of it, provides a homogenous barrier to protect the wearer. My conclusion? With microporous film and SMS only part of the material protects the wearer. Tyvek, however, offers a barrier through the entire thickness of the material with an excellent performance!