Abstract:

Significance Click chemistry is a novel synthetic chemistry method that allows the rapid and reliable chemical synthesis of various molecules in a short period of time through the stitching of small units to obtain required functions. Click chemistry provides a powerful and efficient tool for the rapid synthesis and precise modification of functional textiles and shows great potential and advantages in the preparation of functional textile materials. A detailed review of recent research on click chemistry for preparation of functional textiles would be helpful to promote the application of click chemistry to textiles and further explore the potential of click chemistry and broaden its application in other fields, such as hydrophobic, antibacterial, and other speciality-functional textiles.

Progress Despite the short history, click chemistry has made some progress in the field of textiles with its unique advantages. By means of click chemistry, functional monomers or polymers can be cleverly grafted onto the surface of textile fibers to impart specific functionalities, thus improving the functional durability that is lacking in the traditional "pad-dry-cure" processing method. The main types of functionalized surface modification of textile materials by click chemistry are thiol-ene, thiol-epoxides, thiol-halogens, thiol-isocyanates, and thiol-maleimides and azide-alkynes. The reaction mechanism of each type of click chemistry is listed, which provides more possibilities for the preparation of functional textiles. The functional textiles constructed by click chemistry in the current literature can be broadly classified into types such as superhydrophobic, antibacterial, electromagnetic shielding, environmentally responsive (shape memory, pH responsive and photochromic), anti-felt shrinkage, anti-wrinkle, conductive, moisture wicking and photocatalytic. Most of the functional textiles prepared based on click chemistry in the literature mainly focus on superhydrophobic fabrics, and the raw materials used are mainly acrylic (fluorine) esters, long-chain thiols, siloxanes, and mixtures containing both fluorine and silicon, and all of them show good functionality, durability, and chemical and mechanical stability.

Conclusion and Prospect The development of ecologically safe and high value-added functional textiles using high technology is an important future development of the textile industry. Efficient click reactions make it possible to modify carriers with multiple functional groups at the same time, providing a feasible way to design and construct multifunctional textiles. However, there are limitations at this stage that still need research attention. Click chemistry-based research is still at the experimental stage and has not yet achieved large-scale practical application or industrialization, and the occurrence of click chemistry requires the participation of specific reactive groups, and the modification of reactive groups on textile materials is tedious and time-consuming. The types of click chemistry reactions are relatively few, and most of the reported reactions are azide-alkyne cycloaddition and thiol-ene addition reactions, and the efficiency of click chemistry in grafting functional monomers on textiles is low. In addition, click reactions may have different effects on fabric whiteness, stiffness and other taking indexes, and thiols have unpleasant odor, which will undoubtedly limit their applications. Therefore, in view of the above problems, there is an urgent need to develop more economical, efficient, green, and safe types of click chemistry reactions, so that click chemistry can be studied more deeply in the field of textiles. It is believed that there is still a great deal of related work to be explored in the future, with the main challenges focusing on designing more novel functional textiles, optimizing the modification of reactive groups and reducing the impact on the properties of textiles themselves, developing more specialized types of reactions, improving the bonding efficiency of functional molecules, preparing greener and safer precursor substances for reactions, and improving and accommodating the multifunctionality of textile materials.

Key words: click chemistry, functional textile, hydrophobic, flame retardant, antibacterial, anti-wrinkle, electromagnetic shielding