Light fading and wash fastness of dyed nanosol-coated textiles

Dye molecules are incorporated into silica matrices for textile dyeing. One aim is to develop a method to use inexpensive dyes with simple molecular structures for dyeing completely different kinds of textile materials. Altogether, three different classes of dyes are incorporated-positively charged Astrazone Blue, negatively charged Alizarin S Red, and uncharged Sudan II Blue-using an acidic sol-gel process starting with a solution of tetraethoxysilane and crosslinking agents and the dye in ethanol. By means of dip-coating and padding, these solutions are deposited on three different textiles, polyester, polyamide, and cotton. The incorporation properties were mainly influenced by the properties of the dyes, but improved wash fastness can be achieved by modifying the matrix composition.