Relationship between silk fabric pretreatment, droplet spreading, and ink‐jet printing accuracy of reactive dye inks

Abstract

ABSTRACTInk droplet spreading on fabric determines the printing accuracy of ink‐jet printing, and fabric pretreatment greatly affects the ink droplet spreading. In order to reveal the relationship between fabric pretreatment and printing accuracy of reactive dye ink on silk fabrics, the fabrics were pretreated by urea and sodium alginate to control the ink droplet spreading. Results showed that droplet spreading was influenced by surface energy, water absorbing capability and capillary distribution of the pretreatment agent on fabric surface. Urea acted as a moisture‐absorbing agent accelerating the migration of ink from the pretreatment paste to the silk fibers. Final diffusion image and diffused area of droplet on the pretreated fabrics were also investigated. The final image of droplet deposited on sodium alginate and urea pretreated fabrics were circular shape and crisscross shape, respectively. Compared with untreated fabric, results clearly demonstrated that sodium alginate could restrict the droplet spreading due to the diffused area reduced from 85 mm2 to 47–58 mm2. Moreover, urea and sodium alginate as the pretreatment agents were applied on ink‐jet penetration printing. The penetration printing exhibited good printing accuracy, and the color performance and printing accuracy almost the same between obverse side and reverse side of the printings. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018, 135, 46703.