Facile and Versatile Modification of Cotton Fibers for Persistent Antibacterial Activity and Enhanced Hygroscopicity

Abstract

Natural fibers with functionalities have attracted considerable attention. However, developing facile and versatile strategies to modify natural fibers is still a challenge. In this study, cotton fibers, the most widely used natural fibers, were partially oxidized by sodium periodate in aqueous solution, to give oxidized cotton fibers containing multiple aldehyde groups on their surface. Then poly­(hexamethylene guanidine) was chemically grafted onto the oxidized cotton fibers forming Schiff bases between the terminal amines of poly­(hexamethylene guanidine) and the aldehyde groups of oxidized cotton fibers. Finally, carbon–nitrogen double bonds were reduced by sodium cyanoborohydride, to bound poly­(hexamethylene guanidine) covalently to the surface of cotton fibers. These functionalized fibers show strong and persistent antibacterial activity: complete inhibition against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus was maintained even after 1000 consecutive washing in distilled water. On the other hand, cotton fibers with only physically adsorbed poly­(hexamethylene guanidine) lost their antibacterial activity entirely after a few washes. According to Cell Counting Kit-8 assay and hemolytic analysis, toxicity did not significantly increase after chemical modification. Attributing to the hydrophilicity of poly­(hexamethylene guanidine) coatings, the modified cotton fibers were also more hygroscopic compared to untreated cotton fibers, which can improve the comfort of the fabrics made of modified cotton fibers. This study provides a facile and versatile strategy to prepare modified polysaccharide natural fibers with durable antibacterial activity, biosecurity, and comfortable touch.

Grafted antimicrobial cotton fabrics with N-halamine groups via atom transfer radical polymerization

“…Fortunately, as a kind of natural cellulose, cotton consists of polysaccharides which have plentiful -OH groups and a few carboxylic acid groups (Hou et al 2017;Przybylak et al 2016). These polysaccharide structures allow incorporation of various functionalities to cotton, which can result in cotton with new desirable properties, such as antimicrobial activity (Cai et al 2018;Chen et al 2016). Thus, several decades of research have focused on the development of antibacterial cotton fabrics to control infection and transmission of diseases (Fei et al 2018;Humpolicek et al 2017;Mehrez et al 2018;Milorad et al 2018;Mohamed et al 2017;Ravindra et al 2010;Srisod et al 2018).…”

Ggrafted antimicrobial cotton fabrics with N-halamine groups via atom transfer radical polymerization

“…Fortunately, as a kind of nature cellulose, cotton consists of macropolysaccharides which have plentiful -OH groups and a few carboxylic acid groups (Hou et al 2017;Przybylak et al 2016). These polysaccharide structures allow incorporation of various functionalities to cotton, which can result in cotton with new desirable properties, such as antimicrobial activity (Cai et al 2018;Chen et al 2016). Thus, several decades of research has focused on the development of antibacterial cotton fabrics to control infection and transmission of diseases (Fei et al 2018;Humpolicek et al 2017;Mehrez et al 2018;Milorad et al 2018;Mohamed et al 2017;Ravindra et al 2010;Srisod et al 2018).…”

Durable antimicrobial adhesion cotton textiles based on borneol-based anti-MRSA finishing agent

“…Substantial efforts have been made to develop antimicrobial CT using various kinds antimicrobials compounds, such as metal and oxide nanoparticles (El-Naggar et al 2021;Su et al 2021;Thi and Lee 2017), nanocomposite particles (Errokh et al 2021;Irfan et al 2019), hybrid particles (Gao et al 2021a;Karimi et al 2014), chitosan and cationic compounds (Gao et al 2020;Gu et al 2018;Sadeghi-Kiakhani et al 2018), N-halamines (Pan et al 2018;Wang et al 2018) and guanidine (Cai et al 2018;Li et al 2018), etc. Generally, the antimicrobial activity of CT can be achieved by physical incorporating of antimicrobial compounds during extrusion or chemical immobilizing of them on the surface of fabrics (Gao et al 2021b;Ye et al 2021).…”