Simple surface low temperature grafting for antibacterial and anti-felting inkjet printing wool fabrics

It is a trouble to solve the problem of wool fabric shrinkage in daily washing. Coating finishing on wool fiber surface can effectively reduce shrinkage rate. In this study, wool fabrics were pretreated with H2O2 and papain. Then the pretreated wool fabric was coated with chitosan to prepare antibacterial and anti-felting fabric by employing a simple low temperature grafting method. The coated wool fabric showed expectant hydrophilic property without changing the original whiteness. Dye permeability and contour sharpness of inkjet printing wool fabrics were improved by grafting chitosan compared to pretreated wool fabric. The K/S values of wool fabric increased by 40.8 % and stayed high resolution in printed pattern. The area shrinkage of wool fabric decreased from 11.5 % to 4.7 %, which was obviously lower than “machine washable” index (8 %). What's more, the existence of chitosan coating onto wool fibers resulted in outstanding antibacterial property against E. coli in the inhibition ring test. This work opens up a pathway to fabricate anti-felting and antibacterial wool fabrics in practical production with chitosan.