Self-cleaning, superhydrophobic, and antibacterial cotton fabrics with chitosan-based composite coatings

Thirumalaisamy Suryaprabha; Heebo Ha; Byungil Hwang; Mathur Gopalakrishnan Sethuraman

doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.126217

Self-cleaning, superhydrophobic, and antibacterial cotton fabrics with chitosan-based composite coatings

Int J Biol Macromol. 2023 Oct 1:250:126217. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.126217. Epub 2023 Aug 11.

Authors

Thirumalaisamy Suryaprabha¹, Heebo Ha¹, Byungil Hwang², Mathur Gopalakrishnan Sethuraman³

Affiliations

¹ School of Integrative Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Republic of Korea.
² School of Integrative Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: bihwang@cau.ac.kr.
³ Department of Chemistry, Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Dindigul, Tamil Nadu 624302, India. Electronic address: mgsethu@gmail.com.

PMID: 37572817
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.126217

Abstract

The development of cotton fabrics with special properties such as superhydrophobicity, self-cleaning, oil/water separation, anti-bacterial activity and blood repellency without compromising its intrinsic properties such as flexibility, breathability, comfort, and biodegradability is quite challenging task. In this study, a simple and environmentally friendly approach was used to fabricate superhydrophobic cotton fabric by introducing chitosan-based composite coatings over cotton fabric. The surface properties of the cotton samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The prepared cotton fabrics showed excellent superhydrophobicity with a water contact angle of 154.4° and also possess excellent antibacterial activity against Gram positive and negative bacteria with inhibition zone of 16 mm and 22 mm in disk diffusion method and shake flask method results revealed that the chitosan-PAni-ZnO-STA coated cotton effectively inhibits the bacterial growth. Furthermore, the self-cleaning, blood repellency and oil-water separation performance of cotton fabric were also performed to examine the feasibility of as-modified cotton in both environmental and clinical applications.

Keywords: Antibacterial activity; Self-cleaning surfaces; Superhydrophobic.