Direct dyeing of cotton fabrics pre‐treated with cationising agents

Abstract

Pre-treatment of cotton fabrics with mono- and bis-reactive cationic agents produces a fibre that may be dyed with direct dyes under neutral conditions in the absence of salt. Fairly high degrees of exhaustion and fixation and improved wet fastness were achieved for all cases of cationised cotton fabrics compared to untreated samples. The results also indicate that cotton pre-treated with the bisreactive cationic agent shows higher degrees of dye exhaustion and fixation relative to cotton pretreated with the mono-reactive agent.