Functional Finishing of Barkcloth for Antimicrobial Properties Using Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles

Barkcloth a naturally occurring cellulosic non-woven fabric has recently obtained attention within the scientific community for end use applications in various industries for instance automobile, household furnishing and construction owing to its robust mechanical, thermal and sound absorption properties. In this work, barkcloth was treated with different concentrations of zinc oxide nanoparticles which were deposited with the pad-dry-cure procedure. The Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) were chosen for the evaluation of the anti-microbial efficacy of Zinc oxide Nanoparticles (ZNPs). The coated barkcloth samples with ZNPs concentration 0.6 g/L optimally performed against the two most common resistant bacteria i.e. the gram +ve and gram –ve bacteria, with the gram negative E-coli bacteria demonstrating a high susceptibility to the ZNPs than gram positive S-aureus.