Controlling the Spreading of Nanoliter-Scale Droplets on the Fibers of Fabrics for Enhancing Image Quality and Ink Utilization

Abstract

Electronic and traditional textiles have been widely manufactured through inkjet printing. However, nanoliter-scale ink droplets tend to excessively spread along the fiber direction, which results in poor image quality and low ink utilization. Here, hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) and hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC) were introduced to control the spreading of nanoliter-scale droplets on cotton fabrics. The results showed that both HEC and HPMC could reduce the spreading of nanoliter droplets along the fibers through increasing the hydrophobicity of the fabric. However, the effect of HPMC was much better than that of HEC due to its higher surface activity. The flow of nanoliter droplets along the fibers was well consistent with the Washburn function. After HPMC treatment, the depositing length of one droplet reduced from beyond 200 μm to about 50 μm. The imaging quality was greatly improved. In addition, the dye utilization increased by 33–78% due to the decrease in the diffusion of dye solution to the back of the fabric. This study is of great significance for improving the quality of inkjet printing and the utilization of depositing materials, particularly expensive materials.

Fabrication of Chitosan-Loaded Multifunctional Wool Fabric for Reactive Dye Digital Inkjet Printing by Schiff Base Reaction

“…Wettability affected the spread and penetration of ink droplets when the drops impacted fabrics. , The water contact angles of wool fabrics were measured to investigate the wettability (Figure g), and optical photographs of water on fabrics were offered in Figure e,f. OW displayed strong hydrophobicity (137.2°) due to the presence of hydrophobic lipids. , The pretreatment of H 2 O 2 and papain synergistically removed the scales, so the enhancement (119.3°) of hydrophilic properties of wool fabrics was limited.…”

“…So far, large-scale production of inkjet printing on fabrics has been preliminarily applied in the textile industry on account of its celerity, high resolution, and environmentally friendly properties. , With the rapid development of digital inkjet printing techniques in practical printing production, various research studies focused on dye inks have been extensively studied. As one of the indispensable consumables in the printing process, reactive dye inks are increasingly being used for cellulose fibers and protein fibers because of their bright color, high fastness, and good stability. − Moreover, studies on inkjet printing on cotton fabrics have been extensively reported. − However, access to obtain multifunctional wool fabrics with high-quality inkjet printing images targeting the high-end market to meet the needs of people still remains a concern.…”

Study on the quality and inkjet printing effect of the prepared washing-free disperse dye ink

“…For the fabric inkjet printing pattern, the principal index to evaluate the quality of printing ink is the sharpness, color strength, and color fastness of the printing pattern. 25,26,[30][31][32] Table 5 lists the printing fabric parameters of washing-free disperse dye ink. It can be seen from Table 5 that the line width of the printing fabrics is related to the ink viscosity and uidity (The uidity of ink is closely related to its transverse relaxation time).…”

Research on Image Sharpness Enhancement Technology based on Depth Learning

“…Then, to prevent the loss of low resolution picture information, the enhancement block merges the image characteristics of two separate image routes using residual operation and sub-pixel convolution. In order to properly reflect the anticipated high-quality picture, high-frequency information is refined using the feature purification block [25].The above process is described in detail in Fig. 2.…”