Patent ID: 7258910

Claim:
A topsheet for an absorbent article which has an uneven profile formed on a surface thereof to be brought into contact with a wearer's skin, the uneven profile being flexibly deformable in conformity to the contour of the wearer's body and to the wearer's movement, and depressions of the uneven profile being capable of trapping high-viscosity excreta thereby separating the high-viscosity excreta from the wearer's skin while an absorbent article having the topsheet is worn, said uneven profile being formed by gathering an unevenness-forming sheet into a plurality of parallel hollow folds and joining the thus-folded sheet to a base sheet at only a single base at the same ends of said parallel folds of said hollow folds, wherein said hollow folds of said unevenness-forming sheet each have an Ω-shaped cross-sectional contour in their width direction, with adjacent folds not being attached to each other so as to be capable of separating high viscosity excreta from adjacent skin, and the shortest distance W 3 between said adjacent parallel folds is 0 under no load being applied, said topsheet having a compressive recovery (DΔL R2.5 /L 2.5 ) of 70% or more as obtained from thicknesses L 2.5 and L R2.5 according to the equation DΔL 2.5 /L 2.5 =L R2.5 /L 2.5 ×100, wherein L 2.5 is the thickness of the topsheet having been compressed under a load increasing up to 2.5 gf/cm 2 , and L R2.5 is the thickness of the topsheet having been further compressed by increasing the load to 20 gf/cm 2 and then relieved from compression until the load is reduced to 2.5 gf/cm 2 , wherein said topsheet exhibits (1) a compressive deformation percentage (CΔL 2.5 ) of 0.1 to 5% based on the initial thickness when compressed under a load of 2.5 gf/cm 2 , said compressive deformation percentage CΔL 2.5 being calculated from the equation: CΔL 2.5 =(L 0 −L 2.5 )/L 0 ×100, wherein L 0 is the initial thickness, and L 2.5 is the thickness under a load of 2.5 gf/cm 2 , and (2) compressive deformation percentage (CΔL 5 ) of 5 to 20% based on the initial thickness when compressed under a load of 5 gf/cm 2 , said compressive deformation percentage CΔL 5 being calculated from the equation CΔL 5= (L 0 −L 5 )/L 0 ×100, wherein L 0 is as defined above, and L 5 is the thickness under a load of 5 gf/cm 2 .