Supercritical carbon dioxide dyeing (SDD) as a dyeing media not only provides a friendly dyeing environment but also significantly increases polymeric dyeing performances ascribed to strong azo dye affinity. Disperse azo dyes have shown to be highly efficient dyeing agents due to their facile coupling synthesis, side chains position, and length tunability to optimize absorption properties. Herein, we first synthesize two series of disperse red azo dyes via a coupling chemical route. Further, we investigate the position of the electron withdrawing group and alkyl chains length impact onto the absorption and color fastness properties. Upon synthesis, 1H NMR and mass spectroscopy were used to characterize our newly synthesized series dye structure. Also, according to spectroscopic characterization, the functional group positions as well as the alkyl chains length have a major impact on the dye series maximum light absorption wavelength and performance. We have performed SDD dyeing of polyethylene terephthalate woven and determined each dye color fastness, we find that a reduced electron withdrawing effect and alkyl chains increase reduce color-fastness performances. Overall, our dyes exhibited a good resistance against detergent water, perspiration, abrasion, and friction.
Keywords: colorfastness; disperse azo dye; dyeing; end-chain structure; supercritical carbon dioxide.