High Performance of Multifunctional Cotton Fabrics Modified with TiO2, Fe, Ag-doped TiO2 and Graphene Oxide Nanomaterials towards Antimicrobial and Adsorption Removal of Methylene Blue Dye

Abstract

Multifunctional cotton textile nanocomposites are well developed by the functionalization of cotton with pure TiO2, Ag-, Fe-doped TiO2, and graphene oxide nanoparticles via sol-gel and modified Hummer methods. The treated fabrics materials are investigated by XRD, FT-IR, and SEM. The obtained treated fabrics have been used as an adsorbent for the methylene blue dye removal from aqueous solution. The functionalized cotton fabrics are tested for antimicrobial capability towards Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, and Candida albicans. All functionalized fabrics have higher antimicrobial activity compared to untreated cotton especially the fabrics containing silver and Fe doped TiO2. The optimum conditions of the adsorption process are determined via the study of the effect of the initial concentration of dye, pH, and contact time on the removal efficiency. Langmuir, Freundlich, and Tempkin isotherms are applied for the equilibrium adsorption data. GO-Cot and Ag-Ti@GO-Cot samples showed the highest adsorption removal activity. The linear correlation coefficient (R2) showed that the Temkin model well fitted the data of adsorption on the GO-Cot sample. The analysis of experimental data with different kinetic models showed that the pseudo-second-order kinetic model well fitted the adsorption data better than the other kinetic models of pseudo-first-order, Elovich, and the intra-particle diffusion.