New Approach for Imparting Antimicrobial Properties for Polyamide and Wool Containing Fabrics

Abstract

Direct fiber polymer/antibiotic interaction is a promising means of providing infection resistance textile fabrics. Ionic interaction between cationic reactive groups (antibiotic) and carboxylic groups in wool, wool/polyamide, wool/polyester, and polyamide was used as a tool to develop desirable, durable antimicrobial fabrics. The finishing conditions such as pH, finishing temperature, and time were studied. The results revealed that pH of the finishing bath and the antibiotic concentration as well as finishing temperature were very critical parameters in affecting exhaustion of the antibiotic by the fabric along with the extent of ionic interactions. Sorption of doxymycin antibiotic follows the descending order: wool > wool blends>polyamide. Zone of inhibition of all treated fabrics is governed by the pH and follows the descending order: pH 6.5 > pH9 > pH 2.3. FTIR Spectroscopy confirmed the ionic interaction between wool 100%, wool/polyamide (50%/50%) and doxymycin, because of appearance of new bands at 1641 cm⁻¹ which attributed to NH₂ deformation amide I and band at 1514 cm⁻¹ corresponding to amide II (in case of wool 100%). For wool/polyamide blend it is noticed that appearance of new bands at 1415 cm⁻¹ corresponding to C-N stretching (amide III band for CONH₂, in addition to the appearance of new band at 927 cm⁻¹ which could be assignments for CO-NH in plane. Reusing of the treatment bath was tried and proved to be very effective approach to produce infection-resistant biomaterials for medical applications.