Title
Effects of low temperature plasma treatment on the wettability of bamboo/cotton blended fabrics
Authors
C. W. KAN and Y. L. LAM

Received November 26, 2014
Published Volume 51 Issue 1-2 January-February
Keywords plasma treatment, bamboo, cotton, blended fabric

Abstract
This paper investigates the influence of low temperature plasma, under various treatment conditions, on the wettability of bamboo/cotton blended fabric. Low temperature plasma treatment can modify the surface of the polymers and change substrate characteristics, such as wettability, and more importantly, the process is an environmentally friendly finishing. In this paper, bamboo/cotton blended fabric was treated with low temperature plasma under different treatment conditions, such as different oxygen flow rate, jet-to-substrate distance and plasma treatment time, to evaluate how these parameters influence the characteristics of treated fabrics. After the plasma treatment, evaluation tests, such as topography by scanning electron microscopy, wettability, whiteness and yellowness, were conducted to evaluate the properties of plasma-treated fabric under different parameters. The study concluded that there was a desirable change in the wettability of the bamboo/cotton blended fabric due to the plasma treatment.