Green and Efficient Inkjet Printing of Cotton Fabrics Using Reactive Dye@Copolymer Nanospheres

Abstract

Digital inkjet printing of textiles possesses great advantages like high efficiency and flexible production, but the challenges like the risk of causing serious environmental problems due to the large usage of dyes and chemicals are still remaining the matter of concern. In response to this problem, herein a novel kind of reactive [email protected] nanospheres were prepared through the adsorption of C. I. Reactive Red 218 dyes (RR218) onto cationic poly(styrene-butyl acrylate-vinylbenzyl trimethylammonium chloride) (PSBV) nanospheres, and applied in the inkjet printing on woven cotton fabric. Results show that, the prepared [email protected] nanospheres possessed homogeneous size and good stability for ink preparation. In comparison with original RR218 solution, the color depth of [email protected] printed fabric increased by 1.4 times, and the dye residues in printing effluent were reduced by about 45 %. Meanwhile, the consumption of sodium carbonate and urea in conventional inkjet printing was reduced by about 3.3 mg/cm2 and 22.8 mg/cm2 respectively, and the printing process was simplified with 30 % energy saving. Furthermore, the mechanism of the color enhancement by nanospheres was revealed by the calculation of absorption and scattering coefficient based on Kubelka–Munk function. This work provides a potential application of [email protected] nanospheres to promote the optimization of textile inkjet printing technique, and alleviate the environmental impact of conventional textile coloration.