Abstract
Cotton fabric, as an important material, is suffering from some defects such as flammability, easy pollution and so on; therefore, it is important to make a flame-retardant and superhydrophobic modification on cotton fabric. In this study, we demonstrated a preparation of high-efficiency flame-retardant and superhydrophobic cotton fabric with double coated construction by a simple multi-step dipping. First, the fabric was immersed in branched poly(ethylenimine) (BPEI) and ammonium polyphosphate (APP) water dispersions successively, and then immersed in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/cellulose nanocrystals (CNC)-SiO2 toluene dispersion to form a BPEI/APP/PDMS/CNC-SiO2 (BAPC) composite coating on the surface of the cotton fabric. Here, the hydrophobic modified CNC-SiO2 rods were used to construct the superhydrophobic layer and the BPEI/APP mixture was used as the flame-retardant layer, as well as SiO2 particles which could further improve the flame-retardant effect. PDMS was mainly used as an adhesive between the BPEI/APP layer and the CNC-SiO2 layer. The resulting cotton fabric shows outstanding flame-retardant properties, in that the value of oxygen index meter (LOI) reaches 69.8, as well as excellent superhydrophobicity, in that the water contact angle (WCA) is up to 156.6°. Meanwhile, there is a good abrasion resistance, the superhydrophobicity is not lost until the 16th abrasion cycles and the flame retardant retains well, even after 100 abrasion cycles in an automatic vertical flammability cabinet under a pressure of 8.8 kPa.
Highlights
Fire disaster occasionally takes placed in daily life and may lead to significant losses of human lives and properties [1]
After the fabrics were coated by branched poly(ethylenimine) (BPEI) (Figure 2c), there was no significant change on the surface of the cotton fibers
After further immersing in ammonium polyphosphate (APP) aqueous dispersion, some irregular-shaped APP particles were attached to the surface of the B cotton fabric (Figure 2d), followed by treatment by PDMS (Figure 2e) to obtain a firmer structure
Summary
Fire disaster occasionally takes placed in daily life and may lead to significant losses of human lives and properties [1]. Cotton fabric is a common and important material for human survival due to its softness, comfort and environmental protection, but it is too flammable to use in some occasions such as use as for fabric for fireman’s clothes, which have a high requirement for flame-retardancy [3]. There have been various methods exploited to prepare a flame-retardant cotton fabric, including dipping [4], pad–dry–cure [5], sol–gel [6], layer-by-layer assembly [7] and so on. Kanat et al [10] synthesized two new phosphorus flame retardants for cotton fabric using an oxide as raw material, and their flame-retardant effect was obvious. Alongi et al [11] applied both SiO2 and phosphorus flame retardant to cotton fabric by sol–gel method, which greatly enhanced the flame-retardant effect
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