**7. Future trend and technology nonwoven fabrics**

Two- and three-dimensional textile fabrics are increasingly utilized technical textile areas from garments to structural load-bearing materials for various industries such as aerospace, defense, civil engineering, and transportation industries [150]. Novel fabric formation techniques are also being developed from the fundamental methods like weaving, braiding, knitting and nonwoven technology.

The 2D nonwoven fabric is the basic planar sheet material that can be produced by various methods including needling, stitching, hydroentanglement, spunbonding, meltblown and electrospinning techniques. In addition, 3D nonwoven fabric serves as a thick fabric structure with various uses and is fabricated by needling, stitching and electrospinning techniques. More development on nonwoven technology is expected with the evolution of electrospinning process to make nano-fiber-based nonwoven planar sheet or 3D entangled fabrics. This will open up new opportunities especially in medical and hygiene applications. Furthermore, the use of bioactive and alloy fibers in nonwoven materials produced by needlepunching or hydroentanglement improves the performance of hygiene nonwoven materials from many aspects such as absorbency, thermo-physical and comfort properties, prevention of crossinfection of diseases and suppression of the generation of unpleasant odors. The reliability and durability of surgical implants such as hip and knee replacements could be improved by electrospun nanofiber coatings [151]. The filtration materials could be reusable, and durable, as well as biodegradable, and recyclable [152]. The natural fiber based nonwoven fabric will be extensively used for the future transportation industries due to the fuel efficiency, envi‐ ronment protection, recycling and economic performance [153]. Nonwoven nanomaterials are expected to be the subject of future research and will find extensive usage in medical, energy, electronics, automotive and other industrial applications.
