Color-Variable Photodynamic Antimicrobial Wool/Acrylic Blended Fabrics.

Tingting Wang,Tingting Dong,Zihao Lv,Siming Zheng,Reza A Ghiladi,Qingqing Wang,Xiuming Cao,Qufu Wei,Wangbingfei Chen

doi:10.3390/ma13184141

Tingting Wang, Tingting Dong + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13184141

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Abstract

Towards the goal of developing scalable, economical and effective antimicrobial textiles to reduce infection transmission, here we prepared color-variable photodynamic materials comprised of photosensitizer (PS)-loaded wool/acrylic (W/A) blends. Wool fibers in the W/A blended fabrics were loaded with the photosensitizer rose bengal (RB), and the acrylic fibers were dyed with a variety of traditional cationic dyes (cationic yellow, cationic blue and cationic red) to broaden their color range. Investigations on the colorimetric and photodynamic properties of a series of these materials were implemented through CIELab evaluation, as well as photooxidation and antibacterial studies. Generally, the photodynamic efficacy of these dual-dyed fabrics was impacted by both the choice, and how much of the traditional cationic dye was employed in the dyeing of the W/A fabrics. When compared with the PS-only singly-dyed material, RB-W/A, that showed a 99.97% (3.5 log units; p = 0.02) reduction of Staphylococcus aureus under visible light illumination (λ ≥ 420 nm, 60 min), the addition of cationic dyes led to a slight decrease in the photoinactivation ability of the dual-dyed fabrics, but was still able to achieve a 99.3% inactivation of S. aureus. Overall, our findings demonstrate the feasibility and potential applications of low cost and color variable RB-loaded W/A blended fabrics as effective self-disinfecting textiles against pathogen transmission.

Highlights

Common textiles are susceptible to bacterial and fungal growth in warm and humid environments.In addition to their well-known threat to human health, these pathogens are associated with other negative effects on textiles: in addition to causing odor and mildew stains, the excretion of acid by bacteria will lead to both discoloration and mechanical damage [1], especially for protein-rich wool fabrics [2]
To broaden the colorimetric range of the rose bengal (RB)-loaded W/A blended fabrics, here we introduced three representative cationic dyes onto the acrylic fibers: cationic yellow (CY), blue (CB) and red (CR)
Given that significant differences were observed in the photodynamic properties of fabrics loaded with the same amount of photosensitizer (RB), as well as considering how a smaller ratio of the cationic dye led to better photodynamic effects, these results suggest that cationic dye loading was the key factor in inhibiting the photodynamic activity of RB, likely by absorbing light that would otherwise have led to the photodynamic production of Reactive oxygen species (ROS) by RB

Summary

Introduction

Common textiles are susceptible to bacterial and fungal growth in warm and humid environments.In addition to their well-known threat to human health, these pathogens are associated with other negative effects on textiles: in addition to causing odor and mildew stains, the excretion of acid by bacteria will lead to both discoloration and mechanical damage [1], especially for protein-rich wool fabrics [2]. A number of antimicrobial agents have been incorporated into textiles for infection control, including antibiotics [7,8], quaternary ammonium salts [9,10], silver nanoparticles [11,12], graphene [13,14] and dendrimers [15,16]. These all exhibit certain limitations, such as being expensive and/or difficult to dye or finish on textiles, can lead to drug-resistant strains [17], Materials 2020, 13, 4141; doi:10.3390/ma13184141 www.mdpi.com/journal/materials. Materials 2020, 13, 4141 are potentially toxic or lead to undesired side effects (rashes or allergic responses) on the wearer [1], or possess a limited range of antibacterial function (i.e., against a single class of pathogen) [18].

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