Improvements of surface functionality of cotton fibers by atmospheric plasma treatment

This study aims to investigate the viability of atmospheric plasma treatment over raw cotton fabric surfaces as an alternative method for superseding the wet textile pre-treatment processes. For this purpose, the fabric samples were treated with air plasma and argon atmospheric plasma. Thereafter, the hydrophilicity and the wickability of plasma treated samples increased, and also the contact angles decreased significantly. Chemical changes were analyzed by FTIR-ATR and XPS. Morphological changes were observed by SEM. The results were inspected for assessing to what extent the replacement might be achieved by inducing this surface modification method.