Insight into Understanding Incorporatoin of Glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane for Improving Hydrothermal Stability and Porous Structure of Silicic Acid Tanned Leather

Abstract

Tanning with silicic acid, a kind of silicon-containing materials, is considered as a more environmentally benign process; however, the obtained leather would become stiff and brittle during storage in spite of possessing acceptable shrinkage temperature (Ts). Herein, we incorporated organosilicon material attaching silicon atoms with T linkage structure (e.g. glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane, GPTMS) in the leathermaking process to investigate hydrothermal stability and porous structure, in particular their variation along with different storage time, through Ts determination, DSC analysis, SEM observation and SEM-EDS test. The results confirmed that the introduction of GPTMS stabilized properties of the resultant leather during accelerated ageing process, which may be ascribed to that GPTMS could prevent silicon hydroxyl groups existing in collagen fiber matrix from further condensation. Besides, the tanning mechanism of chrome-free tanning agent based on silicon materials such as silicic acid and GPTMS was investigated preliminarily by means of FT-IR and XPS analysis, indicating hydrogen bonds between silicon hydroxyl groups and amino groups in collagen molecules, and the covalent bonding formed by epoxy group of GPTMS and carboxyl groups of collagen fibers are beneficial to improvement of the properties of siliconbased materials tanned leather. These findings provide an effective and promising strategy to control condensation of silicon hydroxyl groups, and are of great significance to the development of a chrome-free tanning technology based on silicon materials.