Substrate Independent Dyeing of Synthetic Textiles Treated with Low-Pressure Plasmas (2011)

textiles, home textiles, the automobile industry and to lesser extent in apparel textiles due to their special characteristics such as resistance to chemicals, low density etc. The dyeing of PP is difficult and the fastness properties are not good due to the highly crystalline molecular structure. However, dyeing of PES blends is a problem due to damage/reduction in the strength of natural fibers (cellulose degradation etc.) at high dyeing temperatures. Due to the hydrophobic nature of PES, its compact structure and cristallinity dyeing is limited to water-insoluble dyes such as disperse dyes, vat dyes etc. (De Girogi et al., 2000). The low and finite water solubility of these dyes is also a critical factor in determining levelling properties and dyeing rate Conventional polyester dyeing processes additionally require dispersing agent, dye carriers, and surfactants to obtain dye solubility in water. Due to dye reduction and migration, the fastness to washing was found to be on the satisfactory level when dyeing with these dyes The rate of diffusion of these dyestuffs in the fiber is relatively low. Therefore, the rate of diffusion in the conventional PES dyeing commercially may be raised either by working at higher temperature in the region of 130 C and/ or in the super atmospheric pressure in the presence of accelerating agent or carrier or surfactants or dyeing auxiliaries. Recently, research on the use of different surface modification techniques such as low pressure plasma (LPP) and atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) in order to improve the dyeability of polyesters has grown in interest, since they are environmentally efficient. An increase in hydrophilicity and dyeability of knitted PES textiles after the plasma modification in an O 2 /CF 4 mixture was obtained, as reported by The dyeability with basic dye is enhanced on PET/cotton blends by in situ polymerization of acrylic acid and water (ktem et al., 2002). for a 2% owf (on the weight of fabric) dark shade dyeing with hydrophobic basic dye. A higher color yield was obtained on acrylic acid grafted PET fiber induced by Ar plasma. They reported that alkali, sol-gel and oxygen plasma treatments are able to enhance the color strength. Continuous modification of PES was carried out using DBD (dielectric barrier discharge) plasma at atmospheric pressure with a Ar/O 2 ratio of 10:1 It was reported that the spectral value (K/S) dyed with blue disperse dyes was found to be increased by 50% in comparison with that of untreated samples due to the formation of -COOH groups during plasma treatment. The work of Anti-reflecting coating layers have been deposited with organo-silicon compounds using APP plasma, which enhanced the color intensity on PET surfaces as explained by They found that plasma-treated samples significantly reduced the dyeability due to the etching of macromolecules in the dyeable amorphous phase. Recently, Addamo et al. (2006) reported that the color depth of air LPP plasma treated PET fibers is related to their topographical characteristics and to their chemical surface composition. They observed that the color strength with disperse dye at a dyeing temperature of 100 C can be increased by decreasing the fraction of light reflected from the treated surfaces.