Use of Spectroscopic, Mechanical, and Microbiological Analysis to Study a Natural Sheep Leather

Natural leather is a durable and flexible material processed from the hides and skins of animals by tanning. The individual features and the composition of each animal's hides and skin contribute to determine the chemico-physical and mechanical properties of the obtained natural leather. Deep knowledge of such properties is required to select a suitable application field for the produced leather as well as for the development of new performant synthetic leather. In the present work, the chemical structure of sheep leather used as a model is studied by attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. Moreover, some chemico-physical properties, as well as microbiological properties and tensile strength, are determined.