Grafting Onto Raw Silk Fiber And Properties Of Silk Fiber

The main aim of this study was to improve the properties of silk fiber by using methyl acrylamide (MA) and ethyl methylacrylate (EMA) to graft to raw silk fiber. The effects of the weighting percentage such as monomer concentration, initiator concentration, reaction temperature, reaction time and pH were investigated; we could get an optimal procession condition. Then we studied the effects of the grafted silks with different weighting percentage and the difference of grafting to raw silk and to degummed silk by testing the properties of grafting silk, such as whiteness, moisture regains, dissolvability, dyeing properties (K/S, level dyeing), scan electron microscope, FT-IR, thermal behavior (TG-DTA) and amino acid analysis.The present results showed that: grafting to raw silk could weighten the silk and improve the properties of the silk, fix the sericin as well. Compared to the silk, moisture regains, level dyeing and thermal behavior of raw silk grafted by MA was better. The K/S value increased a little, the fastnesses decreased a little. But the level dyeing of raw silk grafted by EMA declined severely. Compared to the grafted degummed silk, the moisture regains and level dyeing improved a little. All of the results show that using MA to graft silk had better applicable value.