Anti-UV Textiles Coating With Nanoscale Layer By Atomiclayer Deposition

Ultraviolet(UV) irradiation can cause severe damages to textiles, such as color fading, polymer degradation, mechanical strength decrease and yellowing. In order to improve the UV-protection function of silk fiber and dyed Polyamide/aramid blend fabric, we deposited inorganic UV blocking agents onto them using atomic layer deposition(ALD) technique to produce functional fabric that could be resistance to high intensity UV light.In this study, silk fiber was successfully modified by nanoscale titania coatings prepared by atomic layer deposition(ALD) with Titanium tetraisopropoxide(TIP) and water as precursors at 100 oC. Scanning electron microscopy, X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy results showed the uniform and conformal titania coatings can be deposited onto the silk fiber. The thermal and mechanical properties of TiO2 silk fiber were investigated. The results showed that the thermal stability and mechanical properties were slightly higher than the uncoated one.Furthermore, the ALD process of titania imparted to the silk fiber a excellent protection against UV radiation: significant increases in UV absorbance, greatly enhanced in mechanical properties and much less yellowing compared with the uncoated one after UV exposure.We deposited inorganic TiO2, Al2O3 and TiO2/ Al2O3 nanolayer onto polyamide/aramid dyed fabric using ALD technique. Combined scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and thermogravimetry studies demonstrate that Ti O2, Al2O3 and TiO2/ Al2O3 nanolayer were successfully deposited onto the fiber surface. The dyed fabric deposited with different ALD coatings showed high intensity UV resistance property with the range of 200 cyc TiO2/50 cyc Al2O3> 300 cyc TiO2> 300 cyc Al2O3 and the ALD film coatings could effectively prevent the high intensity UV-induced mechanical strength damage of dyed fabric.These results suggested that ALD technology could be effective to produce functional materials by depositing functional molecules or agents onto kinds of matrixes.