Environmentally Sustainable Flame Retardant Surface Treatments for Textiles: The Potential of a Novel Atmospheric Plasma/UV Laser Technology

Abstract

Conventional flame retardant (FR) application processes for textiles involve aqueous processing which is resource intensive in terms of energy and water usage. Recent research using sol-gel and layer-by-layer chemistries, while claimed to be based on more environmentally-sustainable chemistry, still require aqueous media with the continuing problem of water management and drying processes being required. This paper outlines the initial forensic work to characterise commercially produced viscose/flax, cellulosic furnishing fabrics which have had conferred upon them durable flame retardant (FR) treatments using a novel, patented atmospheric plasma/UV excimer laser facility for processing textiles with the formal name - Multiplexed Laser Surface Enhancement (MLSE) system. This system (MTIX Ltd., UK), is claimed to offer the means of directly bonding of flame retardant precursor species to the component fibres introduced either before plasma/UV exposure or into the plasma/UV reaction zone itself, thereby eliminating a number of wet processing cycles. Nine commercial fabrics, pre-impregnated with a semi-durable, proprietary FR finish and subjected to the MLSE process have been analysed for their flame retardant properties before and after a 40 °C 30 min water soak. For one fabric, the pre-impregnated fabric was subjected to a normal heat cure treatment which conferred the same level of durability as the plasma/UV-treated analogue. TGA and LOI were used to further characterise their burning behaviour and the effect of the treatment on surface fibre morphologies were assessed. Scanning electron microscopy indicated that negligible changes had occurred to surface topography of the viscose fibres occurred during plasma/UV excimer processing.

Hydrophobic Leather Coating for Footwear Applications by a Low-Pressure Plasma Polymerisation Process

“…In the component values obtained, no significant changes were observed depending on the plasma treatment and the untreated sample. It can be highlighted that the HMDSO coating deposited by plasma polymerisation on the leather sample does not affect neither the colour nor the surface appearance of the original pigment of the leather, as can be seen in Figure 7 , according to the requirement that there must be a difference between the values ≤ 2.5 established by INESCOP’s upper materials laboratory based on its experience [ 53 ].…”

The Potential for Bio-Sustainable Organobromine-Containing Flame Retardant Formulations for Textile Applications—A Review

“…It is interesting to note, that in spite of the many papers published recently in which applications of nanotechnology with the aim of improving non-halogen-containing, flame retardant efficiency [ 53 ] coupled with the interest in novel surface treatments mainly on cotton, such as sol–gel [ 39 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ], layer-by-layer [ 39 , 54 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ] and atmospheric plasma [ 66 , 67 , 68 ], limited levels of flame retardancy and durability have often only been achieved. None of these treatments to the author’s knowledge has been either applied to or found to be acceptable in back-coating applications.…”