Inexpensive and commercially available
methylene-bis-acrylamide
(MBA) was covalently bonded onto the cotton fabrics by an effective
catalytic solid-state reaction in water. The as-prepared MBA grafted
cotton fabric (cotton-MBA) was characterized by field emission scanning
electron microscopy image and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy
spectra. After a facile chlorination in diluted NaOCl solution, the
amide functional groups in cotton-MBA were converted to N-halamine
ones and durable antibacterial cotton fabric containing stable noncyclic
N-halamine groups (cotton–MBA–Cl) was achieved. Antimicrobial
testing showed that the cotton–MBA–Cl could effectively
inactivate 5.78 × 107 CFU/mL of S. aureus and 7.58 × 108 CFU/mL of E. coli O157:H7 completely within 1 min of contact time. Washing durability
testing indicated that the oxidative chlorine percentage of the cotton–MBA–Cl
decreased from 0.43% to 0.06% after 50 washing cycles and was recovered
to 0.30% via a simple rechlorination. It means that the N-halamine
antimicrobial groups and the covalent bonds between MBA and cotton
are very resistant to washing. Storage stability testing showed that
the oxidative chlorine percentage of the cotton–MBA–Cl
decreased from 0.43% to 0.32% after 30 day’s storage under
room temperature, indicating that N-halamine functional groups are
stable. Furthermore, it was found that the grafting and chlorination
processes did not have any obvious bad effect on the tensile strength
of cotton fabrics due to the mild grafting and chlorination conditions.