| Author: | Lam, Chui Fung |
| Title: | Investigation of atmospheric pressure plasma treatment for cotton fabrics preparation |
| Degree: | M.Phil. |
| Year: | 2014 |
| Subject: | Cotton fabrics. Surface preparation. Plasma polymerization. Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Institute of Textiles and Clothing |
| Pages: | xix, 182 leaves : illustrations ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | This thesis is concerned with a study on the effects of atmospheric pressure plasma treatment on cotton fabric preparation. Cotton is the most widely used natural fiber in clothing today and is well known for its good softness and moisture absorption properties. To obtain a functional cotton fabric, the grey cotton fabric is going through a series of wet chemical preparation treatments, such as desizing, scouring and bleaching. Although the performances of the cotton fabric can be enhanced after treated with conventional wet treatments, a large amount of water, chemicals and energy are incurred in the processes. Moreover, with increasing concerns about the environment, a more effective and environmentally friendly cotton pretreatment process is essential in order to minimize the chemical wastes and associated disposal problems. In this study, four types of cotton woven fabrics and two types of cotton knitted fabrics were used. Both woven and knitted cotton fabrics were treated with atmospheric pressure plasma under different output powers and oxygen flow rates, in order to determine how these different combinations of plasma processing parameters influenced the chemical and physical properties of the treated fabrics towards different evaluation tests. For comparison purposes, the cotton fabrics have been treated with conventional wet chemical pretreatment processes and the evaluation tests were based on the aim of wet chemical pretreatment. A series of physical and mechanical tests have been carried out to evaluate the performances of the conventional and plasma treated cotton fabrics. The results revealed that there was desirable improvement on the wettability of the plasma treated cotton woven and knitted fabrics, which even had an outstanding result than those fabrics treated with conventional desizing and/or scouring process. The reduction on fabric weight after plasma treatment revealed that plasma treatment can help to remove starch sizes and/or impurities. Characterization techniques and analytical instruments such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) have been used for investigating the property changes of untreated and treated fabrics. The studies on the cotton surface and chemical characteristics help to offer a better understanding of how the reaction mechanism occurs between plasma treatment on cotton fabrics and wet processing agents, and also give an entire comparison between conventional wet processing and plasma treatment. The conventional treated and plasma treated fabrics also have been dyed with two different colors to observe the dyeability changes. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b27628723.pdf | For All Users | 7.02 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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