Research On Mercerization And Silver-coating Process Of Cotton Yarns

As a kind of natural cellulose fiber, cotton product is deeply liked by people with its good wearing property, and extensively applied to medical base material with its fine affinity. But it has weaker antimicrobial ability, so this paper focused on investigating a new finish process, inserting nanometer-like silver particles to cotton fibers, to prepare durable and permanent antibacterial cotton products.The cotton yarns were pretreated with NaOH solutions with no tension at constant temperature. The water absorption was used to signify the total pores'amount of cotton yarns to find the best treatment parameters. The results showed that the water absorption of cotton yarns obviously increased after sodium hydroxide treatment, when temperature at 20℃, concentration of NaOH at 10%, and treatment time at 10min, the treatment effect is best.The [Ag(NH3)2]+ solution was reduced by glucose, hydrogen peroxide and tannic acid respectively on different conditions, which set up the base for the latter silver-coating process. The results showed that the nanometer-like silver particles could be prepared by the above reducing agents, and the diameters decreased in turn. The tannic acid had the best reducing effect, and didn't damage the cotton fiber, so it was chosen to reduce [Ag(NH3)2]+ in the following silver-coating process.On the base of sodium hydroxide treatment to cotton yarns, the nanometer-like silver particles were inserted into the intra-fibrous pores by reducing [Ag(NH3)2]+ with tannic acid. The morphology and diameter of silver particles adsorbed by fibers were tested by SEM, and the chemical valency state and its combination manner with fibers were investigated by XPS and IR spectra. The antibacterial activity of silver-loaded cotton yarns were also tested by qualitative and quantitative method. The results showed that the silver...