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The applications and effects of plasma on textile fabrics are the main focus in this paper. We surveyed available literature on the plasma-fabric interaction and found that there are variation of parameters affected the plasma application. The parameters can be classified as weight loss, tensile strength, contact angle, aging effect and addition of contents of different chemical functional groups. The increase or decrease in weight of fabrics after oxygen, nitrogen, and atmospheric plasma treatment was obtained in this study. The weight loss increased with the exposure time of plasma but decreased with the pressure. The tensile strength decreases with plasma duration and increases with plasma power. The type of plasma also affects the wettability of fabric. Wettability of a fabric increases with plasma treatment time. The plasma treatment of fabric adds different elements such as oxygen, carbon and nitrogen on the surface. The amount of oxygen increases but carbon and sulphur decreases. The increase or decrease in contact angle depends on the conditions of plasma treatment. The aging time of plasma depends on different parameters of plasma treatment. The hydrophilicity character also affected by plasma treatment. The hydrophilicity decreased with treatment time.

The use of ZnO as a photocatalyst with a reduced recombination rate of charge carriers and maximum visible light harvesting remains a challenge for researchers. Herein, we designed and synthesized a unique La/ZnO/CNTs heterojunction system via a sol–gel method to evaluate its photocatalytic performance for hydrogen evolution. A ferrocene powder catalyst was tested for the production of CNT forests over Si/SiO2/Al2O3 substrate. A chemical vapor deposition (CVD) route was followed for the forest growth of CNTs. The La/ZnO/CNTs composite showed improved photocatalytic efficiency towards hydrogen evolution (184.8 mmol/h) in contrast to 10.2 mmol/h of pristine ZnO. The characterization results show that promoted photocatalytic activity over La/ZnO/NTs is attributed to the spatial separation of the charge carriers and extended optical absorption towards the visible light spectrum. The optimum photocatalyst shows a 16 h cycle performance for hydrogen evolution. The H2 evolution rate under visible light illumination reached 10.2 mmol/h, 145.9 mmol/h and 184.8 mmol/h over ZnO, La/ZnO and La/ZnO/CNTs, respectively. Among the prepared photocatalysts, ZnO showed the lowest H2 evolution rate due to the fast recombination of electron–hole pairs than heterojunction photocatalysts. This research paves the way for the development of ZnO and CNT-based photocatalysts with a wide optical response and reduced charge carrier recombinations.