Improvement of Chitosan Adsorption onto Cellulosic Fabrics by Plasma Treatment

Abstract

Oxygen plasma treatment was applied in order to improve the adsorption of chitosan onto viscose fabric. Modification of the surface and adsorption of chitosan was monitored by determination of XPS spectra, determination of contact angles from rates of water imbibition, and conductometric titration. The plasma treatment resulted in hydrophilization of the surfaces through oxidation. The hydrophilic surfaces were stable for at least 24 h. The treatment also yielded binding sites that resulted in over 20% increase of the amount of chitosan adsorbed over that adsorbed on nontreated fabric. Layers of chitosan adsorbed after plasma treatment were substantially more active as antimicrobial agents than those on nontreated surfaces.

Using atmospheric pressure plasma for enhancing the deposition of printing paste on cotton fabric for digital ink-jet printing

“…After plasma pretreatment, aldehyde and carboxyl groups would be introduced to the cotton fibre. As a result, the interaction between chitosan and cotton fibre might be due to the combination of electrostatic and electrodynamic interactions (ionic and covalent bonds) with the additional hydrogen bonding (Fras Zemljic et al 2009). In addition, a large amount of water imbibed into the plasma-pretreated cotton fabric may imply that there was an increase in accessibility for chitosan to deposit at the fibrous materials (Fras Zemljic et al 2009).…”

“…Therefore, the reduced contact angle and increased wettability of the plasma-pretreated sample might be attributed to oxygen-containing surfaces induced by oxygen plasma treatment. As a result, the adhesion between the printing paste and cotton fibre surfaces would be enhanced (Shahidi et al 2010;Shateri Khalil-Abad et al 2009;Fras Zemljic et al 2009). …”

“…In the case of the SA/Chplasma and Ch-plasma fabric samples, plasma pretreatment could further increase the chitosan adsorption because the deposition of chitosan on the nonplasma-pretreated cotton fabric was predominantly driven by physical interactions such as Van der Waals' forces or hydrogen bonding. After plasma pretreatment, both aldehyde and carboxyl groups would be generated inside the cotton fibre to enhance the interaction between chitosan and cotton fibres due to the electrostatic and electrodynamic interactions (ionic and covalent bonds) associated with the additional hydrogen bonding (Fras Zemljic et al 2009). …”

“…On one hand, chitosan itself could achieve significant anti-bacterial properties, but on the other hand, it could provide other functional effects like colour-related properties. Although chitosan exhibits excellent anti-bacterial property when used in the printing paste, it was not necessary to use 100% chitosan because small amount of chitosan could demonstrate similar effect as 100% chitosan (Shin et al 2001;Fras Zemljic et al 2009). As a result, the use of sodium alginate-chitosan mixture could provide the same anti-bacterial effect with the best printing properties.…”

Cellulose-based materials as scaffolds for tissue engineering

“…These modifications involve plasma, ion or UV irradiation, which are proved to increase the attractiveness of synthetic polymers for cell adhesion and growth (Parizek et al 2009; for a review, see Bacakova et al 2011). Plasma modification increased the adsorption of chitosan to cellulose (Fras Zemljic et al 2009). Another important modification is functionalization with various biomolecules, such as fibronectin (Ko and Iwata 2001), and particularly ECM-derived adhesion oligopeptides (e.g., RGD), which has also been successfully applied in cellulose-based materials (Bodin et al 2007).…”