Effect on the anti-felt properties of atmospheric pressure plasma treated wool

Wool fabrics were treated with air/helium and oxygen/helium atmospheric pressure plasmas. Wetting properties, anti-felt properties, solubility properties in an alkaline medium, and tensile strength loss of the wool fabric were measured. Surface morphology and chemical compositions of the wool fabric were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively. Both air/helium and oxygen/helium plasmas greatly improved wool shrink-resistance (11.67% and 10.98%, respectively) with very little damage to the wools, though plasma treatments alone could not reach wool fabric machine washable level of 8% shrinkage. The reason for the treated wool having higher anti-felt property was that the plasma treatments produced physical etching action to generate fiber surface cracks and induced the oxidation reaction to enrich oxygen and nitrogen on wool surface. The wool samples pretreated with atmospheric pressure plasma and subsequently treated with Synthappret BAP showed area shrinkages of 5.64% (air/helium) and 5.23% (oxygen/helium), and thus met the machine washable requirement. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.