Finishing of cotton and polyester fabrics using chitosan-containing recipes

With the increased stress in people’s daily lives, the secretion of sweat from the human body has steadily increased. Therefore, textile industries continue to introduce various products to meet consumers’ demands. Thus far, people use more cotton and polyester fabrics among other textile fabrics in their daily usage or total living period. Textile products, especially those made from cellulose fibers such as cotton, can promote the growth of microorganisms due to their high surface area and moisture retention. In contrast to cellulosic materials, polyester contains no chemically functional or hydrophilic groups. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure wearers’ protection as both cotton and polyester can create unwanted odors due to the decomposition of sweat by microorganisms. The application of chitosan on textile substrates is a useful approach for textile functionalization. Chitosan has been reported as a popular finishing agent due to its intrinsic properties, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, non - toxicity, abundance in nature, antimicrobial, and antistatic ability, etc. In this study, the solution of chitosan was applied to 100 % cotton and polyester fabrics using a common pad - dry - cure technique. The resulting fabrics were characterized by drop - test, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and color measurement. Thus, this study presents a small overview of the finishing using chitosan - containing recipes on both cotton and polyester fabrics.