Ammonia/acetylene plasma deposition: An alternative approach to the dyeing of poly(ethylene terephthalate) fabrics at low temperatures

Abstract

It has long been recognized that dyes other than disperse dyes would play a much larger industrial role if they could be applied to poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fabrics at low temperatures. This research is related to a new process for the dyeing of hydrophobic PET with hydrophilic acid dyestuffs. The process is based on low-pressure plasma polymerization using an ammonia/acetylene gaseous mixture, which provides a nanoporous plasma coating containing accessible amine groups. Surface functionalization and crosslinking have been analyzed with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The color strength (absorption coefficient/scattering coefficient) of dyed PET is evidently improved by the attachment of dye molecules to the plasma polymer coating. The dyeability strongly depends on the plasma exposure time, gaseous mixture, and energy input. The permanency of the bond between the dye molecules and the plasma film can be characterized as the fastness property of dyed PET. The stability of the plasma coating has been examined with an abrasion and pilling tester.

Tuning the Surface Properties of Oxygen-Rich and Nitrogen-Rich Plasma Polymers: Functional Groups and Surface Charge

“…at high R values [13,38,41]. The route in which ammonia and carbon dioxide act as etchants can be described as follows: in the case of nitrogen rich coatings, it is supposed that atomic hydrogen-which is formed during fragmentation of ammonia-causes etching and as a result, by increasing this ratio the deposition rate decreased drastically [33,40,42]. On the other hand, in case of oxygen rich coatings it is presumed that the number of film-forming hydrocarbon species is decreased when the number of oxygen intermediate species increases [43].…”

Controlling the nanostructure and stability of a-C:H:N plasma polymers

“…For the plasma polymer deposition, a home-built pilot-scale web coater was used which enables semi-continuous processing of webs up to a width of 65 cm [23,24]. The huge vacuum vessel (2 m in height) consists of four separated chambers, the top one used to place the substrate materials (webs) for reel-to-reel processing.…”

Substrate Independent Dyeing of Synthetic Textiles Treated with Low-Pressure Plasmas

“…On the other hand, the reduced film thickness at very low flow rates led to a lower K/S value of the PET fabrics. Thus, dye molecules are able to penetrate into the nanoporous films and facilitate the dyeing of a-C:H:N thin films by forming chemical bonds mainly with amino groups within the plasma coatings (Hossain et al, 2009;Siow et al, 2006). Since the dyestuff used specifically binds with amine groups, dyeing can be used as a specific chemical tracer to detect the amount of amine groups inside the coatings.…”