Different influences of hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose pretreatment on surface properties of cotton and polyamide in inkjet printing

Abstract

Because of the huge difference in the surface properties of cotton fibers and polyamide fibers, the cotton/polyamide fabric has a poor ink-jet printing effect without pretreatment, such as the lighter color and the poor definition. Herein, hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose was used to pretreat the cotton/polyamide fabric to improve the fabric surface properties. The results show that the surface property change of cotton fibers and polyamide fibers are diverse. Due to changes of groups on fiber surface, the surface hydrophilicity of cotton fiber is weakened, while the hydrophilicity of the polyamide fiber surface is enhanced. Meanwhile, the yarn gaps are filled by HPMC, which promotes the migration of the reactive dye inks to adjacent yarns instead of the spread along the single yarn. These combined effects control the diffuse of ink droplets on the fiber surface and are beneficial to improvement of inkjet printing color strength and sharpness for the cotton/polyamide fabrics. Compared with sodium alginate, the K/S of the pretreated cotton/polyamide fabric inkjet printed cyan, magenta, yellow and black are increased by38.5%, 61.2%, 30.9% and 30.5%, respectively. We believe that HPMC pretreatment is an easy and effective method to improve the inkjet printing performance of the cotton/polyamide fabric, which can be of great potential for industrial production in the future.