Plasma for Textile Manufacturing

Low-temperature plasmasurface modification technology is increasingly being used in textile processing. It has advantages that traditional chemical processing does not have, such as no need for water and chemicals, less pollution, and low wastewater treatment costs, making it an environmentally friendly processing method. Low-temperature plasma is a partially ionized gas, with an electron temperature higher than the ion temperature. The high-energy electrons and low-energy molecular active species generated during discharge can cause reactions without damaging materials due to high temperature. Most textile materials are thermosensitive polymers, making low-temperature plasma particularly suitable for processing textile materials. Through plasma treatment, a large number of active functional groups can be introduced to change the properties of the fabric, such as improving wetting, dyeing, water or oil resistance, changing physical or electrical properties, cleaning fiber surfaces, and so on. Importantly, low-temperature plasma can process textiles in large quantities.

Improving Wetting Performance

Plasma treatment can introduce hydrophilic functional groups such as -COOH, -OH, -NH2, etc. to improve the wetting performance of fibers, which directly reflects the effectiveness of plasma treatment. It is not recommended to use the contact angle measurement method to calculate the surface energy when evaluating the wetting performance of the fabric after plasma treatment because the surface of the textile is rough, and the accuracy of the contact angle measurement is low. When the contact angle is small, the water droplets are quickly absorbed by the porous surface of the textile and cannot be accurately measured. It is best to use the measurement of water droplet absorption time or core absorption time to indirectly reflect the changes in the wetting performance of the fabric after treatment.

Improving dyeing and printing performance

Plasma treatment can partially remove the hydrophobic layer on the surface of fibers, promote the interaction between fibers and dyes, and allow more dyes to enter the interior of fibers through the surface. Plasma treatment to improve the dyeing performance of textiles mainly involves the following aspects: increasing the dyeing rate, increasing the exhaustion rate of dyes, and improving dyeing uniformity. Many fibers can be improved in dyeing performance through plasma treatment, and there are two commonly used treatment methods: plasma deposition and non-plasma deposition. Plasma deposition is the use of chemicals containing functional groups for in-situ plasma polymerization on the fiber surface to form a coating of functional groups on the surface of the fiber fabric. Non-plasma deposition uses plasma such as oxygen to chemically react with functional groups and dye molecules on the fiber surface, or to change the surface properties of the fiber to improve the dispersion of dye molecules.