Abstract:
Antistatic compositions for topical application to substrates, which comprise 
     (a) a polymer of less than about 20,000 molecular weight consisting essentially of, in polymerized form, about 10 to 99 mole % alkylene oxide, of 2 to 4 carbon atoms, about 1 to 90 mole % glycidol and about 0 to 15 mole % of the glycidyl ester of a fatty acid of about 2 to 20 carbon atoms and about 0 to 15 mole % of the glycidyl monoester of a polycarboxylic acid, 
     (b) a curing agent capable of cross-linking the polymer by reaction with the primary hydroxyl groups of the glycidol units, such as melamine-formaldehyde condensates, dialdehydes, polycarboxylic acids and their anhydrides, epoxy resins (polyepoxides), polyisocyanates, and the like and 
     (c) a catalyst for the curing reaction, such as zinc fluoroborate, a sulfonic acid, phosphoric acid, ammonium sulfate or the like.

Description:
This application is a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 553,713 filed 2/27/75 now abandoned. 
    
    
     CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     Copending applications Ser. No. 444,078 filed Feb. 20, 1974, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,854, and Ser. No. 633,539 filed Nov. 19, 1975, as a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 466,099 filed May 2, 1974, and now abandoned, by three of us (Stevens, Sexton and Corson), disclose polymers suitable for use in the present invention and methods for making such polymers. For such disclosure, they are hereby incorporated herein by reference. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Textiles containing acrylic, polyester or polyamide fibers and films of such thermoplastics are prone to develop objectionable static electric charges. An excellent general review of various antistatic compositions and processes for ameliorating the static problem is that of John E. Clark, Am. Dyestuff Reporter, Feb. 27, 1967, pp. 37-43. 
     Topical antistats, i.e., those designed for surface application to reduce static charge build-up, have been unsatisfactory for use on textiles because of defects such as lack of permanence, unpleasant hand (greasy feel, harshness, etc.), or undesirable appearance or odor, etc. Desirably, such antistats should be such that they can be applied from an aqueous medium and then rendered wash-resistant by a simple after-treatment. They should not impart odor, color, greasiness, unpleasant hand, dullness or other undesirable property to the substrate nor adversely affect its normal utility. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The antistatic composition of the invention comprises: 
     (a) a polymer of less than about 20,000 molecular weight consisting essentially of units of the formula 
     
         --CH.sub.2 CHRO-- 
    
     where in about 10 to 99%, preferably about 50 to 95%, of the units R is H, CH 3  or C 2  H 5 , in about 1 to 90% preferably about 5 to 50%, R is CH 2  OH, and in about 0 to 15%, preferably about 1 to 5%, R is R&#39;COOCH 2  wherein R&#39;CO is the acyl group of a fatty acid of about 2 to 20, and preferably about 8 to 18, carbon atoms or of a polycarboxylic acid, 
     (b) a curing agent for said polymer that is capable of crosslinking the polymer; and 
     (c) a catalyst that catalyzes the reaction between the polymer and the curing agent. 
     As is apparent from the above formula, the preferred polymer is a copolymer of alkylene oxide, glycidol and a glycidyl ester of a fatty acid or polycarboxylic acid, though the glycidyl ester moieties are not essential. The preferred polymer is of about 500 to about 20,000 and most preferably about 3,000 to about 7,000 weight average molecular weight. Also preferred is a polymer wherein an average of about 1 to about 2 glycidyl ester moieties are present for about each 5000 unit of molecular weight. Above about 20,000 molecular weight, the polymers are extremely difficult to handle and dealkylate and become impractical for use herein. 
     The curing agent is preferably one that is capable of crosslinking the polymer by reaction with the hydroxyl groups of the glycidol units. Such agents are well known and include aldehydes, melamine-formaldehyde condensates, polycarboxylic acids and their anhydrides, polyisocyanates, polyepoxides, and the like. 
     The nature of the catalyst depends on the type of curing agent used. Thus, acidic materials, such as zinc fluoroborate, organosulfonic acids, phosphoric acid, ammonium sulfate or persulfate or the like are effective to catalyze the reaction of carboxylic acids or anhydrides, epoxides, aldehydes and melamine-formuladehyde condensates while tertiary amines and other bases are effective with isocyanates. 
     The above composition is conveniently applied to textile materials from an aqueous dispersion, the treated material is dried and the surface coating thus produced is then cured by a brief heat treatment. This fixes the composition on the fiber so that it is resistant to removal by normal wear, laundering, drycleaning, and the like. 
     A major advantage of the invention is that many of the polymers used in the composition are water-soluble or sufficiently surface-active to be self-emulsifying in water, thus eliminating need for a separate surfactant. A related advantage is that the composition in the form of an aqueous solution or emulsion can be applied to only one side of a textile product, such as cloth or carpet, and will penetrate through the textile, thus becoming effectively distributed to the opposite side and to the individual fibers or threads constituting the textile product. 
     The flexibility inherent in the invention by virtue of the wide variation in number and size of ester groups and in the frequency of crosslinks in the cured composition, as well as in the relative proportions of alkylene oxide and glycidol units in the polymer, permits wide variation and precise control of the effect of the antistatic treatment on the textile material. 
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     While it is possible to apply the antistatic composition of the invention to textile materials in the form of a solution or dispersion in an organic solvent, it is far more practical to avoid the use of such solvents and to use aqueous solutions or dispersions instead. The concentration can be varied widely, depending largely on the nature of the textile material to be treated and the weight pick-up desired on the textile material. In a preferred application, such as on carpet made of synthetic fibers, such solutions or dispersions may suitably contain about 5 to 50 wt. % of the antistatic composition (total solids basis). While in most instances, the polymer component is adequately water-soluble or self-dispersing, conventional dispersing and emulsifying agents may also be used if desired. 
     The curing agent should be one that is unreactive in the composition under normal conditions but becomes reactive when the treated textile material is dried and subjected to a curing treatment. Such treatment may consist of heating to an elevated temperature. The amount of curing agent used should be adjusted to produce the desired degree of crosslinkage. Too little produces an inadequately cured product which may be sensitive to water or drycleaning solvents while too much may cause a harsh &#34;hand&#34; or excessive stiffness or brittleness of the fiber itself or the coating thereon. For adequate insolubilization of the resin, there should be an average of at least about two, and preferably three or more, hydroxyl groups per molecule and enough curing agent should be used to react with an average of at least about two such groups. 
     The catalyst used and suitable amounts thereof depend on the nature of the curing agent. In most cases the catalysts are of the acidic type, zine fluoroborate and toluenesulfonic acid being especially preferred. 
     The antistat composition is prepared by simply mechanically dispersing the ingredients in a fluid medium, preferably water. 
     The composition may be applied to textile materials in any convenient manner, such as by padding, dipping, spraying, etc. Application to films may be made in the same manner except that in some instances it will be desirable to pretreat such films by standard corona discharge techniques to obtain good adhesion by the antistatic composition. The &#34;pick-up&#34; or amount of solids thus deposited on the substrate will depend primarily on the concentration of solids in the treating composition and the amount of composition applied. When the application is by dipping or spraying, any excess can be squeezed out by squeeze-rolls or the like. The treated material may be dried at normal room temperature and then cured by heating or, advantageously, the drying and curing steps may be combined by passing the wet material into a heated space wherein the water or other fluid is evaporated and the composition is cured by the heat treatment. Suitable temperatures and times will vary, depending on the particular materials being processed. For example, nylon carpet typically may be dried and cured at 105° C. in about 5 to 20 minutes or at 200° C. in 4 to 8 minutes. Light fabrics require much less time. 
     The copolymers of alkylene oxide, glycidol and glycidyl ester can be made by copolymerizing the monomers by the usual methods of copolymerizing alkylene oxides and substituted alkylene oxides, including glycidyl compounds. This method requires glycidol as a starting material, however, and this monomer is expensive and not readily available. Moreover, its primary hydroxyl group enters into the polymerization, thus leading to undesirable and excessive branching in the product. 
     Another procedure for making the copolymers is that of copolymerizing alkylene oxide with a silicon ester of glycidol (U.S. Pat. No. 3,446,757) or with epichlorohydrin (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,578,719, 3,595,924 and 3,666,671), hydrolyzing the copolymer, thus indirectly producing a linear copolymer of alkylene oxide and glycidol, and then partially esterifying the copolymer with the desired fatty acid. 
     A preferred procedure is that disclosed in the copending applications cited above, wherein alkylene oxide is copolymerized with tert.-butyl glycidyl ether, thus producing an essentially linear copolymer. The tert.-butyl groups are then removed and, to the desired extent, replaced with acyl groups, thus producing the desired copolymer for use in the present invention. The one-step removal of tert.-butyl groups and partial esterfication of the resultant glycidol units is effected by heating a mixture of the polymeric ether, the appropriate amount of acid or anhydride and an acid catalyst, preferably an organosulfonic acid, such as toluenesulfonic acid. Isobutylene and water are byproducts and can be collected and used to monitor the progress of the reaction. the removal of tert.-butyl groups is usually substantially complete by the time the desired degree of esterification has been effected. The acid used for esterification may be a single species or a mixture of two or more species, and may be saturated or unsaturated. 
     While the above discussion refers to certain copolymers as being linear, it should be understood that this refers to the configuration of the polyoxyalkylene chain of units of the formula 
     
         --CH.sub.2 CHRO-- 
    
     and not necessarily to the entire molecule. It is conventional to use initiators or starter compounds in such polymerizations, these are compounds having one or more active hydrogen atoms, i.e., atoms that are reactive with alkylene oxides. Typical initiators include alcohols, glycols, glycerol, sorbitol, phenols, carboxylic acids, primary and secondary amines, ammonia and water. Those having more than two active hydrogen atoms inherently produce branched molecules, one branch arising at the site of each active hydrogen atom in excess of two. Thus, initiators having only one active hydrogen atom, such as monohydric alcohols and phenols, produce straight-chain polymers terminated on one end with a hydroxyl group, those having two active hydrogen atoms produce straight-chain polymers terminated on both ends with hydroxyl groups, and those having three or more active hydrogen atoms produce branched polymers, each branch being a straight chain terminated on the distal end with a hydroxyl group. In making the polymers for use in the present invention, any or all of the terminal hydroxyl groups may be esterified with acids as herein described. 
     SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION 
     The following examples illustrate the practice of the invention. 
    
    
     EXAMPLE 1 
     A polymer consisting essentially of a random sequence of an average of about 22 ethylene oxide units, 1.5 glycidol units and 1.0 glycidyl stearate unit was made by the preferred method described above by copolymerizing a mixture of ethylene oxide and tert.-butyl glycidyl ether in a molar ratio of 9:1, using ethylene glycol as the initiator and KOH as the catalyst. The polymer had a molecular weight of about 1300. This polymer was simultaneously dealkylated and esterified by heating it with a catalytic amount of toluenesulfonic acid and an equimolar amount of stearic acid. About 2.5 moles of isobutylene and 1.0 mole of water were evolved, thus producing the desired copolymer. 
     An antistatic composition was prepared from the above copolymer by mixing 100 parts by weight of the copolymer, 400 parts of water, 4 parts (anhydrous basis) of zinc fluoroborate and 5 parts of a melamine-formaldehyde condensate sold under the tradename Cymel 303. This composition was sprayed on the reverse side of a nylon shag carpet tufted on jute, the spray being applied in an amount sufficient to thoroughly wet the surface of the fabric. Due to the unique surfactant properties of the copolymer used, the aqueous dispersion penetrated through the carpet and wet the face of the carpet sufficiently to drastically reduce the static build-up thereon. The wet carpet was simultaneously dried and cured by heating in a circulating oven at 150° C. for 25 minutes. It was then back-sized with a conventional elastomer latex and again dried. 
     The static build-up of the treated carpet and of a control sample of the same carpet treated the same way except that no antistatic composition was applied thereto was determined by AATCC Method 134-1969. The control sample developed a charge of 12,300 volts whereas the treated example developed only 6100 volts. 
     EXAMPLE 2 
     A copolymer of molecular weight 5000 was prepared as described above from a 75:25 molar ratio of ethylene oxide and tert.-butyl glycidyl ether. It was then dealkylated and partially esterified with 1.5 molar equivalents of stearic acid, thus producing a copolymer containing in each molecule an average of about 57 ethylene oxide units, 17.5 glycidol units and 1.5 glycidyl stearate units. A composition similar to that used in Example 1 was prepared as a 20% solids dispersion of the copolymer in water together with 5% of the Cymel curing agent and 4% of the zinc fluoroborate catalyst (both based on copolymer). This was applied to a polyester fabric in an amount to provide a 1% by weight pick-up. After being dried and cured in a 150° C. oven the surface resistivity (static-build-up tendency) was compared to that of a 80 × 80 cotton fabric, both fabrics having been conditioned at 24° C. and 20% relative humidity. The resistivity of the cotton was 8 ×  10 11  ohms while that of the treated polyester was 3 × 10 10  ohms. 
     EXAMPLE 3 
     A copolymer of molecular weight 5000, initiated with water, was prepared as described above from a 90:10 molar ratio of ethylene oxide and tert.-butyl glycidyl ether. It was then dealkylated and partially esterified with 1 molar equivalent of stearic acid, thus producing a copolymer containing in each molecule an average of about 90 ethylene oxide units, 9 glycidol units and 1 glycidyl stearate unit. A composition similar to that used in Example 1 was prepared as a 20% solids dispersion of the copolymer in water together with about 10% of the Cymel curing agent and about 6.5% of the zinc fluoroborate catalyst (both based on copolymer weight). This was applied to a polyester fabric in an amount to provide about 1-2 weight % pick-up. After being dried and cured in a 115° C. oven, the surface resistivity was about 6 × 10 9  ohms. For the untreated fabric, the reading was off scale, i.e., greater than 10 15  ohms. 
     EXAMPLE 4 
     A copolymer of molecular weight 3000, initiated with dodecyl alcohol, was prepared as described above from a 75:25 molar ratio of ethylene oxide and tert.-butyl glycidyl ether. After complete dealkylation, the dealkylated copolymer was used to prepare a 20% solid dispersion in water together with about 5% of the Cymel curing agent and about 5% zinc fluoroborate catalyst (both based on copolymer weight). After application to a polyester fabric, drying and curing in the manner of Example 3, the surface resistivity was about 1 × 10 11  ohms versus greater than 10 15  ohms for the untreated fabric.