Effect of Crystallinity of PET and Nylon 66 Fibers on Plasma Etching and Dyeability Characteristics

Abstract

We investigated the correlation between crystallinity and plasma susceptibility for PET and nylon 66 fibers. Plasma susceptibility is measured by the weight loss observed when fibers of varying crystallinity are exposed to air plasma. We varied the crystallinity of samples by annealing fibers at different temperatures. Plasma susceptibility and dyeability as a function of the crystallinity of fibers showed a striking resemblance: both decreased with increasing crystallinity up to a threshold crystallinity, above which there were appreciable increases. Plasma susceptibilities of these fibers, under the conditions used in this investigation, are believed to be proportional to the dyeable non-crystalline region, but not to the total noncrystalline phase of fibers.

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

“…Moreover, much research has also been done in the environmentally friendly dyeing of PET with disperse dyes in supercritical CO 2 which has the advantage of reducing the need for additional chemicals and waste water (Okuno et al, 1992;Montero et al, 2003;Özcan et al, 2005). The scaling of the supercritical fluid dyeing experiment from laboratory size to industrial scale is far from being a straight-forward procedure because it requires very high pressures (260-300 bar) and high investment cost.…”

Functional finishing of nonwoven fabrics. I. Accessibility of surface modified PET spunbond by atmospheric pressure He/O2 plasma treatment

“…So, dye uptake is limited, even though accessibility on the surface of PET nonwoven increases. Okuno et al 12 have reported that the dyeability of PET fibers treated by air plasma significantly decreased, because the dye- able noncrystalline region reduced due to etching of polymers. Some part of the redeposited particles and polymer chains with low-molecular weight would wash away during dyeing process at 100°C.…”

Application of atmospheric corona discharge for PES fabric modification

“…It seems to be more advantageous than classical chemical methods and offers distinctive advantages, especially easy modification process control (control parameters being e.g. plasma pressure, discharge input power, modification time and distance between electrode and modified fabric), for details see literature [4], [5], [6], [7]. On the other hand the low-pressure plasma employment is mostly joined with higher financial expenses due to the necessity of the vacuum equipment application and batch processing.…”