Fibers and Polymers最新文献

Bean-flour printing is a traditional craft with local characteristics that originated in China. However, its survival today faces various obstacles, especially the lack of innovation. This study has developed a technique to produce multi-color prints on cotton textiles using bean flour and quicklime as pastes and resist agents. It was found that bean flour could be mixed with various natural dyes and colors in the resist part. The thickness of the bean flour pastes had a direct effect on clarity and brightness of the covered area during printing process. In multi-color printing, the hue of the resist area was closely related to the dyes used and the thickness of the bean flour pastes. In addition, the thickness of the bean-flour pastes played a crucial role in rub resistance of the colors and the overall durability of the printed design. In conclusion, this innovative method of multi-color printing not only preserved but also revitalized the ancient art of bean flour printing.

Healthcare devices play an important role in the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of patients. MXene, as a new member of the two-dimensional materials family, has characteristic conductivity, hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, and antibacterial ability, which makes it suitable for fabricating healthcare devices. By combining MXene with self-healing polymers, durable and self-healing healthcare devices that are resistant to mechanical damage during dynamic work can be achieved. Thanks to the dual biocompatibility of MXene and polymers, the self-healing MXene/polymer composites have the functions of sensing and self-healing in vivo and in vitro, serving as a basis for modern healthcare devices. Herein, we summarize the recent progress of using MXene/polymer composites to fabricate skin-friendly sensors with self-healing capability: universal strategies for fabricating self-healing MXene sensors and their fundamental performance are discussed, and biomedical healthcare applications are demonstrated. This review aims to provide a reference for MXene-based self-healing healthcare electronics and facilitate further efforts in the innovation of modern biomedical devices.

In the continuous textile processing, conventional padding is the most commonly used technique for fabric dyeing. Pad dyeing consumes the substantial water, energy, and harmful chemicals. Recently, foam dyeing has been reported as a sustainable alternative to the pad dyeing for cotton fabric. However, there is a lack of research on the foam dyeing of polyester fabrics. Foam dyeing of polyester fabrics would face various challenges such as dye-uptake resistance due to its hydrophobic properties, foam optimization difficulties, and desired performance achievement. For the first time, this paper evaluates the foam dyeing of the polyester fabrics using three disperse dyes. This paper performs foam dyeing of polyester fabric using three disperse dyes, two foaming agents, and two stabilizers. The foam recipes were optimized for each color, each foaming agent, and each stabilizer. The optimized foam recipes were applied on the polyester fabric samples using a foam coating machine. Performance of the resultant foam-dyed fabric was compared with the fabric dyed with conventional pad-dry-cure method. Testing of the dyed fabric parameters included shade depth, color fastness, tearing strength, and air permeability. Results exhibited the successful application of foaming recipes and competitive performance. Subsequently, foam dyeing of polyester fabrics offers substantial cost savings, water saving, and energy saving.

In recent years, wettability materials with pH-responsive have attracted increasing attention in oil/water separation applications. However, these materials were limited by the pH range and infiltration time. Herein, a simple operational procedure is proposed to prepare banana nanocellulose cryogels with pH-responsive switchable wettability to realize these outstanding performances. Alkyl-modified cryogels (BCNC-MS) are obtained by adding methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) to the banana nanocellulose (BCNF) suspension. BCNC-MS are soaked in the carboxyl-modified solution to produce pH-responsive cryogels (BCNC-MS-SA). The carboxyl-modified solution is made from succinic anhydride (SA), (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (KH550), and N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) in a molar mass ratio of 1:1:18. The key to achieving the pH-response is the protonation and deprotonation of the carboxyl groups. SEM demonstrates that the modification keeps the three-dimensional porous structure of the cryogel, and the results of EDS, FTIR, and XPS show the success of alkyl and carboxyl modifications. BCNC-MS-SA can realize hydrophilic/underwater oleophobic (θ_water = 0°) and hydrophobic/underwater oleophilic (maximal θ_water = 135°) wettability transitions after treatment with different pH solutions. Compared with other pH-responsive oil/water separation materials, BCNC-MS-SA performs well in pH = 1 and pH = 13 environments, and the shortest infiltration time is only 3 s. With a porosity of 93.80%, BCNC-MS-SA possesses excellent adsorption capacity (10–40 g/g), oil/water separation efficiency (> 92%), and adsorption cycle performance (15 cycles) even for viscous oils. Moreover, BCNC-MS-SA has satisfactory stability. Cryogels are made of banana nanocellulose, and they are inexpensive and can be easily degraded. BCNC-MS-SA has great potential in practical applications such as oil removal and purification of oily wastewater.

Natural-derived wound dressing products with on-demand antibacterial properties have recently captured accentuated attention in the application field of dermal wound treatment. Herein, an affordable approach to the fabrication of electrospun membranes employing polycaprolactone (PCL), Poloxamer 407 (POX), and Calophyllum inophyllum oil (CIO) for antibacterial dressings is demonstrated. Briefly, the influence of POX and CIO concentration on the obtained membranes is evaluated to determine the optimal parameters for dressing applications. The surface morphology, chemical compositions, surface wettability, moisture permeability, mechanical properties, and antibacterial activity of the obtained membranes are evaluated. The results show that the PCL_POX_CIO membranes exhibit the enlargement of fiber diameter, indicating a causal correlation between the PCL and CIO concentration. In addition, POX concentration is discovered to have a positive impact on water absorption capacity with recorded WCA of 0°, however, reduces mechanical strength due to bead formations. Specifically, when the CIO content reached 15 v/v%, the recorded inhibition zone was measured to be 15.7 ± 1.34 (mm). Furthermore, our study underscores the significant antibacterial activity of CIO in agar-diffusion tests against Staphylococcus aureus strains. Despite several limitations, the successful fabrication of the PCL_POX_CIO membranes open an economically sustainable approach for the scalable fabrication of antibacterial wound dressing.

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The porous structure formed by the interweaving of yarns in textiles is favorable for sound absorption. However, the absorption of sound waves by porous materials conforms to the law of linear response, which leads to poor sound absorption of textiles in the low-frequency range. It is usually necessary to increase the thickness to improve the low-frequency acoustic absorption performance of textiles, which does not meet the performance requirements of lightness, thinness, width and strength. This work proposes a method to increase the acoustic absorption performance based on acoustic-electric conversion and yarn resonance effect. In the form of a woven spacer fabric structure, different parts of the structure were prepared using nylon and PVDF yarns with different triboelectric sequences to realize acoustic-electric conversion between dielectric materials. Control samples woven with the same material were also prepared. Further, the resonance frequency of the yarns was modulated by controlling their tension to change the resonant frequency corresponding to the maximum acoustic-electric conversion efficiency and sound absorption peak. It was found that fabrics composed of two different materials had better sound absorption than fabrics composed of only one material. This is because the larger triboelectric sequence difference between materials results in more charge transfer, which favors acoustic-electric conversion and acoustic energy consumption. A significant acoustic absorption peak at 390 Hz with a peak value of about 0.05 was observed for a fabric with a thickness of about 4 mm after tension adjustment. This study demonstrates that acoustic-electric conversion between dielectric yarns and proper tension control improves the acoustic absorption efficiency and provides a reference for the development of structures based on this novel acoustic absorption mechanism.

Organic cotton precursor yarn was impregnated in an aqueous solution consisting of diammonium hydrogen phosphate (DAP), boric acid (BA), and urea (U) mixtures before the thermal stabilization stage and then subjected to heat treatments in an air environment at 245 °C. The effect of chemical pretreatment on organic cotton yarn was examined using methods such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and infrared (IR) spectroscopy. The XRD analysis revealed a gradual decrease in the crystalline structure, attributed to the disruption of intermolecular hydrogen bonds. DSC and TGA measurements showed an improved thermal stability due to the formation of pre-graphitic structures with aromatic entities at higher temperatures. For samples chemically impregnated and then stabilized, the char yield values increased from 25% to 68% at 500 °C and 23% to 53% at 1000 °C. Analysis of IR spectra indicated a gradual reduction in both intermolecular and intramolecular hydrogen bonds associated with dehydration and dehydrogenation reactions. The IR spectra also confirmed a decrease in crystallinity with increasing oxidation time, which is consistent with the findings from X-ray diffraction. In addition, the IR spectra showed the presence of C = C bonds, indicating the formation of a crosslinked ladder-like structure. The results showed that DAP-BA-U integration increased the thermal stability of organic cotton fibers and the obtained samples were ready for the next stage, carbonization.

Graphical Abstract

Recently, a variety of materials have been applied to cello endpins to meet the diverse acoustic needs of instrumentalists and audiences. However, only a few studies have been reported on the relationship between the natural frequency and the materials used for cello endpins. In this study, the cello endpins were fabricated using the roll-wrapping method, which can produce various carbon and metal/carbon hybrid composites without defects in the internal structure. In addition, the natural frequency as a function of the used material was investigated using the measurement system designed and configured in this study. The metal/carbon hybrid endpin, which wrapped a metal rod with a carbon composite, had an attenuated natural frequency compared to the carbon composite and metal based endpins, providing a new natural frequency range. The cello endpin proposed in this study by the material engineering design based on acoustic analysis is expected to provide new options for diverse sounds that can meet the acoustic needs of instrumentalists and audiences.

The complex modeling and computational cost are unavoidable in analysis of finite element models (FEMs) when mechanical properties of woven composite materials are predicted. To overcome the drawbacks of FEMs, two different artificial neural network models (ANNMs) based on quasi-static axial compression experimental data of 2.5D woven composite plates (2.5DWCPs) are constructed: (1) The direct strength prediction model (DSPM) is a non-destructive way to predict strength, which is meaningful in engineering; (2) The indirect strength prediction model (ISPM) is based on stress–strain curves, which firstly proposes a simplified data processing method including the state variables (SVs). The SVs are introduced to modify the experimental stress–strain curves, which not only reduces training data size but also significantly improves prediction accuracy. Then, the performance of the DSPM and the ISPM has been evaluated by numerical examples. The results indicate that the DSPM has simple and direct expressions of input parameters (IPs) and output parameters (OPs), which makes it easier to construct and train ANNMs. The ISPM not only utilizes sufficient training data from experiments but also performs well in predicting stress–strain curve and failure strain. In short, two proposed ANNMs have ability to fast and accurately predict compression strength, which are more suitable for engineering than FEMs. To reduce experimental costs, the DSPM is proposed to produce reasonable results. If a lot of experimental data are prepared, the ISPM can produce more accurate results.

The intrinsic antibacterial activity of polypyrrole has been combined with different strategies to control its solubility in water for the following release in antibacterial compounds. Herein, a new method for loading antibacterial polypyrrole into electrospun fibers is proposed, in which freeze-drying of soluble polypyrrole produces a conductive powder loaded into electrospun fibers of Eudragit L100 applied as an antibacterial agent. The dispersion of loaded fibers in aqueous solution results in the release of the polypyrrole that controls the bacterial growth in the bulk solution with the following deposition of bacteria on the fiber surface. The kinetics of bacterial kill time returned 15 min for the complete elimination of S. aureus and 45 min for E. coli. The antibiofilm activity against S. aureus was confirmed with a 4-order reduction in viable cells for treated reactors.