Effects of alkali pretreatment on lyocell woven fabric and its influence on pilling properties

Experiments were conducted to study the influence of various concentration of alkalis on the pilling properties of lyocell fabrics. Generally, the lyocell fabric has more tendency of pill formation due to fibrillation properties. Therefore, present work is focused on the impact of alkali pretreatments with various concentration from 0.5 mol/L to 3 mol/L on lyocell with their pilling resistance. Due to the morphological changes, pilling results are attributed to the alkali types and their concentration. Treatment with TmAH and LiOH at 2 mol/L shows the reduction of a number of fibrils leading to reduce the pill generation significantly. Carboxyl content and iodine sorption value are analyzed to find the impact of alkali on the accessible region and structural changes respectively, also surface modification was observed by SEM to confirm the surface characteristics. Overall results shows that the reduction of fibrillation leads to better pilling resistance of lyocell fabric.