Patent ID: 7704900

Claim:
A process for producing artificial leather sheets, which comprises an entangled non-woven fabric base structure and a porous region in at least one face of the entangled nonwoven fabric base structure, wherein said entangled non-woven base structure comprises elastic polymer fibers and inelastic polymer microfine fibers, wherein the process comprises sequentially: preparing an entangled nonwoven fabric that comprises fibers (A) wherein 0.1 to 95% of an areal proportion of the surface of the fibers is occupied by the elastic polymer and capable of forming fibers of an elastic polymer and fibers (B) capable of forming microfine fibers of an inelastic polymer having a mean fiber diameter of at most 5 μm, applying a liquid that contains at least a good solvent for the elastic polymer, to at least one face of the entangled nonwoven fabric to thereby partly dissolve the elastic polymer in the fibers (A) existing in at least the surface layer part thereof, and then applying thereto a poor solvent for the elastic polymer, and forming fibers of elastic polymer and microfine fibers of inelastic polymer having a mean fiber diameter of at most 5 μm, from the fibers (A) and the fibers (B), respectively.