The development of antimicrobial coatings for footwear components is of great interest both from industry
and consumer’s point of view. In this work, antimicrobial leather materials were developed taking
advantage of chitosan intrinsic antimicrobial activity and film forming capacity. Considering the specificities
of the leather tanning industry, different coating technologies, namely drum, calender and spray,
were tested, being the best results achieved with the drum. This last approach was further investigated
to assess the effect of chitosan content, type of solubilizing acid, and impregnation time on the achieved
antimicrobial capacity. Considering chitosan price (economic reasons) and the obtained results (antimicrobial
activity and coating effectiveness, as inspected by SEM), the impregnation in the drum using
a chitosan content of 1% (w/v) in a formic acid solution during 2 h, is proposed as the best option for
obtaining leather with antimicrobial capacity.
