Abstract
The dyeing process commonly deteriorates the luster of pre-mercerized cotton fabric, so post-mercerization processes are regularly applied to compensate for this. Herein, the influence of combining pre-mercerization with CS (caustic solution) or LA (liquid ammonia) and post-mercerization with CS or LA on the morphological structure, dyeing performance, tensile strength, and stiffness of woven cotton fabric was investigated. The crystallinity index values greatly decreased from 73.12 to 51.25, 58.73, 38.42, and 40.90% after the combined mercerization processes of LA–LA, CS–CS, LA–CS, and CS–LA, respectively. Additionally, the CS–LA- and LA–CS-treated samples exhibited a mixture of cellulose II and cellulose III allomorphs. The combined mercerization processing of cotton fabric resulted in slightly worse thermal stability. The LA and CS pre-mercerization processes increased the dye exhaustion, although the former decreased the dye fixation rate while the latter increased it by 4% for both dyes. The color strength of the dyed cotton fabric increased after both post-mercerization processes. Moreover, the fabric stiffness and mechanical properties showed an increasing trend due to the combined mercerization efforts.
Highlights
Cotton fiber is popularly used in the production of apparel because of its inherent hydrophilicity, comfort, dyeability, flexibility, and breathability [1–4]
The crystallinity of the cotton fiber decreases and the amorphous characteristics increase, producing more pores and effective hydroxyl groups in the fiber, which is beneficial for dye exhaustion [12] and fixation [13,14], Materials 2022, 15, 2092 the resulting fabric [10,11]
In order to calculate the crystalline index (CI) of the samples, Equation (6) was used to calculate the area occupied by the diffraction peaks in each sample
Summary
Cotton fiber is popularly used in the production of apparel because of its inherent hydrophilicity, comfort, dyeability, flexibility, and breathability [1–4]. Cotton fiber requires tedious modification processes, such as ultraviolet irradiation [5], ultrasound [6], microwave irradiation [7], gamma irradiation [8], and plasma treatment [9] to overcome the limited surface wettability, functional characteristics, and dyeing performance. Mercerization treatment by either strong caustic solution (CS) or liquid ammonia (LA) with tension has an attractive effect on the dyeability of cotton fiber and the luster of the resulting fabric [10,11]. The crystallinity of the cotton fiber decreases and the amorphous characteristics increase, producing more pores and effective hydroxyl groups in the fiber, which is beneficial for dye exhaustion [12] and fixation [13,14], Materials 2022, 15, 2092 the resulting fabric [10,11]. The crystallinity of the cotton fiber decreases and the amorphous characteristics increase, producing more pores and effective hydroxyl groups in the fiber, which is beneficial for dye exhaustion [12] and ofifx1a5tion [13,14], leading to improved dyeability [10].
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