Industrial Design: Gore-Tex

With the mass production of outdoor footwear, it is very rare to find leather boots made from a single piece and naturally waterproof.
 In order to add this very important feature to industrially designed, mass produced outdoor shoes Robert Gore patented a waterproof fabric called Gore-Tex. The primary marketable aspects of Gore-Tex are its waterproof and breathable qualities. The design using this fabric is focused less on pattern and appearance and more on comfort and function. Emphasis here is focused on the whole over the parts. The individual layers of various fabrics which make up Gore-Tex goes unnoticed to the consumer because the important elements of the design occur mainly at the microscopic level.
This waterproof sandwich of fabrics is composed of a thin, fluoropolymer (Teflon) membrane bonded to a fabric. The membrane has 9 billion pores per square inch, with each pore being 1/20,000th the size of a water droplet. This design was found to have problems however because the outer Teflon layer is easily damaged. As a result a revised design adds a polyurethane layer as the inner “protection” layer and another lose fabric shell layer.
While the design of this breathable yet waterproof fabric is very exciting and useful for outdoor gear companies wishing to mass produce water-proof active wear, there are a few drawbacks.
Dirt and human perspiration can block the pores of the Gore-Tex membrane causing it to lose its breathable feature. This can be remedied by washing, however washing shoes is difficult
and cleaning can reduce the performance in general. Gore-Tex products, like almost all other mass produced outdoor gear on the market has seams. Seams on Gore-Tex products are taped over, but with time and wear this is another potential area for water to enter.
 Also. in the process of creating fluoropolymers which are in the Gore-Tex materials uses a fluorosurfactant PFOA. This surfactant has potential to exist indefinitely in the environment and  to bioaccumulate.
The invention of this fabric structure will most likely be ever changing, with chemists constantly altering the chemical structure of the various layers as well as the composition of the fabrics to create the end product. So far, Gore-Tex seams to be a very intriguing invention worthy of a close look.