Abstract:

Thermo-responsive textiles can adjust themselves by responding to the environment temperature，which is one of the most researched smart textiles. They have a promising future for thermal/moisture self-adjustment, water-storage and medicine control releasing etc. To prepare thermal-responsive textiles, polymers with the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) are normally grafted onto the fabric. However, it is difficult to graft thermal responsive polymers on textile materials due to lake of reactive sites on textile fibers such as cotton. In this study, the amino silicone finishing was used to introduce amino groups onto cotton fibers and to improve fabric softness. NIPAAm was then successfully grafted onto the cotton by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), which was confirmed by the infrared and contact angle measurements. Prepared cotton-PNIPAAm has a great thermal responsive performance indicated by transitions between hydrophilic and hydrophobic surface reversibly at the LCST.

Key words: smart textile, thermo-responsive, amino silicone, NIPAAm, ATRP