Preparation And Characterization Of Unidirectional Wet Spacer Fabric

With the continuous development of social productivity,the living standards of human beings have been continuously improved,and people’s demands for the comfort,functionality,and even intelligence of clothing have become higher and higher.Unidirectional wet fabric is a functional textile whose function is achieved through the difference in the hydrophilic and hydrophobic properties of the inner and outer layers of the fabric.That is,the outer layer of the fabric is subjected to hydrophilic finishing,and most of the inner layer is subjected to hydrophobic finishing.From the inner layer to the outer layer,a water molecule channel with a weak to strong hydrophilic property will be formed.Under the effect of differential capillary effect,sweat will be automatically excreted from the body.In this paper,a hollow structure of polyester warp knitted spacer fabric is studied.Fabrics obtain the unidirectional wetness function through the way of finishing the fabric.The general process flow for the preparation of the monodirectional wetted spacer fabrics is hydrophilic finishing—single-sided water repellent finishing—plasma treatment.First of all,the alkali-reducing treatment and hygroscopic quick-drying treatment are used on the polyester spacer fabric to make the fabric hydrophilic.The comprehensive value of wicking and the comprehensive value of moisture-conducting were taken as the test indexes of the hydrophilic properties of the fabric,and the hydrophilic properties of the fabric under different NaOH concentration,different concentration of moisture-absorbing and quick-drying finishing agent,different drying temperature were tested.The experimental results show that the core absorption value of the treated fabric is up to 124.37cm2.And through the contrast and the orthogonal experiment,we know the best conditions of the hydrophilic fabric process for the concentration with NaOH solution: 6%,hygroscopic and fast drying finishing agent concentration,6 g/L,drying temperature: 80 ℃.Fabrics were prepared under this condition for subsequent water repellent finishing experiments.On the basis of the hydrophilic properties of the fabric,one side of the fabric is subjected to a single water-repellent coating treatment with reference to the method of fabric coating.The formulation of the water-repellent coating slurry is based on the coated slurry formulation,which is mainly composed of a water repellent agent,adhesives,thickeners,sodium alginate and other reagents.Based on the difference of hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity between the inner and outer layers of the fabric,the water-repellent surface of the fabric is plasma treated by the glow plasma method.Under the action of high-voltage pulses,the water-repellent coating film of the fabric is oxidized,degraded,and etched.It is destroyed to form uniform pores,which form the transport channels of liquid water molecules because most of the inner layer of the fabric is treated as hydrophobic,and the middle and outer layers of the fabric have good hydrophilic properties.Moreover,the inner layer of the fabric retains less moisture and keeps the skin dry,leaving the body comfortable.The liquid water molecule experiment was used as the test index of the wettability properties of the fabrics to investigate the unidirectional wet performance of the fabrics at different water repellent concentrations,different drying temperatures,different baking temperatures and different plasma processing power and time.The experimental results show that the comprehensive ability of the treated fabric is as high as 0.9722.Through comparison and orthogonal experiment to obtain the best single wizard wet process conditions of the performance of the fabric with the rejected water concentration: 2.0 g/L,baking time:60s,baking temperature: 150 ℃,plasma treatment power and time is 1.5 KW and 2 min.The properties of the fabric were tested under this condition.Finally,the unidirectional wet performance fabrics prepared were tested for wet comfort performance and intake performance.The results show that the prepared unidirectional wet fabrics have greatly improved the moisture permeability and quick drying performance of untreated fabrics.The surface morphology of the fabric was observed,we found that after the fabric was treated with a water repellent coating,a uniform coating film was formed on the surface of the fabric.After the plasma treatment,these coating films were damaged to generate holes which formed the channels allow the sweat to move rapidly from the water-repellent surface of the fabric to the hydrophilic surface under a differential capillary effect.