Abstract:

To understand the influence of alkali deweighting treatment of polyester to its hydrophobic treatment including hydrophobicity, wrinkle resistance, breaking strength, and whiteness, polyester fabric was alkali deweighted first and then had polyacrylic acid, tetraethylorthosilicate, and octadecylamine hydrophobic treatment. It was found that fabric was treated in 5% NaOH solution at 90 °C for 10 minutes could have good wetting ability. Alkali deweighting treatment could reduce fabric weight, form pits on fiber surface, increase the space at interlacing point of fabric, and provide more reactive sits for the following polyacrylic acid treatment. It was found that with and without alkali deweighting pretreating, polyacrylic acid-tetraethylorthosilicate-octadecylamine treated polyester fabrics showed different physical properties. The fabric with alkali deweighting pretreatment had higher static water contact angle and water would not soak fabric, bigger breaking strength, and larger wrinkle recovery angle than the one without alkali deweighting pretreatment. The whiteness of both has almost no change.

Key words: polyester fabric, hydrophobic, alkali deweighting, tetraethylorthosilicate, octadecylamine