Obtention of 74:26 polyester/cellulose fabric blend with super-hydrophobic and super-hydrophilic properties by air corona discharge treatment and their characterization

A facile method was used to create both of the super-hydrophilic and super-hydrophobic properties on polyester/cellulose fabric blend. The fabric was exposed to air corona discharge treatment without any extra chemical modification. The static contact angle of 0 degrees and 167 degrees was indicated for super-hydrophilic and super-hydrophobic samples, respectively. The decrease of intensity of active functional groups and the increase of roughness with a nano-scale pattern presented a super-hydrophobic surface that confirmed by ATR-FTIR, AFM and FESEM analysis. This is while the increase of intensity of the active functional groups and the surface roughness with a micro-scale pattern was shown for the super-hydrophilic sample. The wettability tests show the enhancement of hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties for 300W-10 min and 800W-10 min corona discharge treated samples, respectively. Therefore, there is a critical point of the corona discharge process that enables it to create hydrophobic and/or hydrophilic properties on the substrates.