Highly Hydrophobic Cotton Fabrics Modified by Poly(methylhydrogen)siloxane and Fluorinated Olefin: Characterization and Applications.

Huiping Lin,Tianyu Liao,Qingjian Hu,Wenbin Yang,Xinxiang Zhang,Shuang Cai

doi:10.3390/polym12040833

Huiping Lin, Tianyu Liao + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/polym12040833

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Abstract

Highly hydrophobic cotton fabrics were obtained with poly(methylhydrogen)siloxane (PMHS) and a further fluorinated olefin modification. The chemical structures and microstructures of PMHS-modified cotton fabrics were characterized, and application of the resultant cotton fabrics in stain resistance and oil–water separation was demonstrated. PMHS chains with very low surface energy were grafted onto cotton fabric by the dehydrogenation reaction between –Si–H of PMHS and –OH groups of cotton fabric at room temperature. The water contact angle of PMHS-modified cotton fabric was 141.7°, which provided the modified cotton fabric with good stain resistance to waterborne pollutants. The separation efficiency of diesel from water was higher than 92% for 20 repeatable separation cycles. A further improvement in stain resistance to oil was also demonstrated by a further addition reaction of 1H,1H,2H-perfluoro-1-decene with PMHS-modified cotton fabric.

Highlights

Cotton fabrics are widely applied as textiles because they are soft, comfortable, breathable, and do not irritate human skin [1]
Fabricating a superhydrophobic surface on cotton fabrics has been extensively studied, which has been demonstrated as an effective method in the functionalization of cotton fabrics for self-cleaning [4,5] and oil/water separation [6,7,8,9,10]
The superhydrophobic surface on cotton fabrics could be realized by various techniques, including the CVD method [11,12,13], sol–gel process [3,14,15], solution immersion [16,17], spray deposition [18,19,20], and graft polymerization [1,12,21,22,23,24,25]

Summary

Introduction

Cotton fabrics are widely applied as textiles because they are soft, comfortable, breathable, and do not irritate human skin [1]. They are used as absorbent materials due to cotton’s microscale porous structure [2]. Cotton fabrics possess two arresting disadvantages: unsatisfactory stain resistance to liquids and poor selectivity in liquid absorption [3]. Normal cotton fabrics can be stained by juice, pigment, and blood, and they are unable to selectively separate oils from the oil/water mixture. It is highly desirable to improve the stain resistance of cotton fabrics and afford them unique oil/water separation ability. To build a rough surface on cotton fabrics, inorganic nanoparticles such as ZnO [26], TiO2 [6,7,15,27], and SiO2 [2,14,28]

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