Soluble and colorless polyimide coated cotton fabric with attractive multifunction: Warmth retention, breathable, antifouling, UV and acid resistance

The coating is an economical and convenient approach for textiles to realize multi-functionalization and broaden their applications in various fields. Polyimide (PI) is an excellent functional coating material with great thermal insulation, ultraviolet resistance, and chemical resistance; however, its coating process requires high cyclization temperature, and its inherent dark color makes it unsuitable for the preparation of functional textiles. In this study, soluble and colorless PI was successfully developed to coat onto cotton fabric via a one-step solution process, thereby effectively avoiding disrupting the substrate fabric's mechanical and color properties in the conventional two-step process. Attractively, this composite coated fabric combined various excellent properties of PI, such as high thermal resistance, water and stain resistance, UV resistance, acid resistance, etc. Especially, the warmth property of PI coated cotton fabric could improve by 3–5 folds as compared to the original cotton fabric and the PI coated cotton fabric simultaneously retained excellent air permeability. This coating method fully integrated the advantages of PI into the fabric, showing great promise for preparing multifunctional fabric in a scalable, economical, and facile way.