“…Regardless of the advantages of good moisture absorption, comfort, warmth retention, and biocompatibility of cotton fabrics, they are easy to wrinkle, shrink, and burn, which restricts their applications. Formaldehyde-based chemicals, especially dimethyldihydroxycycloethylene urea, are still the popular anti-wrinkle finishing (AWF) reagents for cotton fabrics. , However, due to the formaldehyde release problem of the treated fabrics, researchers have been making efforts to develop non-formaldehyde compounds as the AWF reagents for cotton fabrics, such as dialdehyde or polyaldehyde, , polyacrylate, ionic cross-linking agents, , alpha-lipoic acid, chitosan, , waterborne polyurethane acrylate, and polycarboxylic acid (PCA). − Among them, PCA shows an outstanding performance. In addition, PCA is also employed for modifying other functions of cotton fabrics, such as flame-retardant finishing, , carboxyl modification of adsorbents for wastewater treatment, , and so on.…”