Patent ID: 7396783

Claim:
A fibrous hydrophobic structure treated to be rendered hydrophilic and exhibiting a run-off level determined by a series of run-off tests, wherein each run-off test comprises exposing said fibrous structure to a volume of 25 ml of a test solution and said fibrous structure initially is hydrophobic and has been treated to be hydrophilic, characterized in that said fibrous structure exhibits a run-off level that is zero throughout a series of run-off tests, wherein the series starts with a first run-off test and ends with a fifth run-off test, and that said test solution has a surface tension before the first run-off test which is above 70*10 −3 N/m and a surface tension after the first run-off test which is less than 60*10 −3 N/m, characterized in that said treatment and run-off level has been accomplished by subjecting the fibrous structure to a corona discharge in the presence of a gaseous mixture comprising i) at least one type of silicon-containing compound, ii) oxygen or other oxygen containing gas and iii) a carrier gas so as to bond one or more types of polar, silicon-containing compounds, to at least one portion of the surface of the fibrous structure and then adding an organosilicon based surface active agent or a composition comprising an organosilicon based surface active agent to the fibrous structure, and the at least one type of silicon-containing compound in the treated structure is mainly constituted of a compound of the type SiO x H y wherein x is in the range of 1 to 4, and y in the range of 0 to 4.