A low-dosage chemicals, short process alternative approach to reactive dyeing of golden cocoon-like silk fibers with robust color fastness

Golden cocoon silk fibers suffer a lot from limited yield and serious color losing, which greatly restrict their uses. The development of golden cocoon-like silk fibers can effectively address the above issues. Herein, a low-dosage chemicals, short process alternative approach to reactive dyeing of golden cocoon-like silk fibers with robust color fastness was proposed. Investigation involves the pretreatment of the above silk via one-bath method followed by reactive dyeing. The results indicate that the color of as-prepared golden cocoon-like silk fiber is comparable with the commercial golden cocoon one. The short-process dyeing and robust color fastness with reactive dyes of silk fiber can be realized via the introduction of alkali. Importantly, no obvious color degradation following cyclic washing was observed, with the value of color difference within 2.0. Additionally, the tensile behavior of reactive dyed golden cocoon-like silk fiber was not significantly decreased as compared with the raw fiber.