Simplified and efficient inkjet printing of cotton fabrics using cationic colored nanoparticles

Cotton is one of the most important apparel crops. However, the rapid development of traditional inkjet printing on cotton fabrics was restricted by chemical abuse and energy consumption, which caused serious environmental problems. Researching a new eco-friendly colorant is an urgent requirement for the textile printing and dyeing industry. Herein, we prepared a new cationic polyethyleneimine dye nanosphere (PBVP(R218)) that showed excellent performance in environmentally friendly inkjet printing of cotton fabrics without pretreatment. The PBVP (R218) nanospheres possessing high dye loading properties show an excellent aqueous stability, and performed outstanding stability during the inkjet printing process without satellite ink droplets. Compared with traditional reactive dye R218 inks, the PBVP(R218) nanospheres simplify the complicated inkjet printing process and eliminate the pretreatment and steaming processes for cotton fabrics. Meanwhile, there are no requirements for chemicals such as thickeners, salts and alkalis throughout the inkjet printing process, allowing greater energy savings and less emission. The patterns printed by PBVP(R218) nanospheres have good color fastness and better color depth than traditional reactive dye inks. Therefore, the development of green inkjet printing for cotton fabrics with dye/nanospheres can effectively reduce the environmental pollution and ecological impact of the textile industry.