Study of the chemical grafting of polyester textile material with chitosan biopolymer after its pre-activation with atmospheric plasma treatment

The current work investigated the study of the influence of the pretreatment of polyester textile material with atmospheric pressure oxygen plasma on its grafting behavior with chitosan biopolymer as direct grafting procedure without the use of crosslinking agents, which generally modifies the original surface properties of textiles. Firstly, polyester textile material was pre-activated with oxygen plasma treatment under referred conditions. Then chitosan polymer was grafted to pretreated polyester using pad-dry-cure simple method. The different grafting parameters such as time and curing temperature were studied. To evaluate the chemical grafting performance, FT-IR analysis was performed via ATR mode. Mechanical characterization was then conducted showing no degrading of the original mechanical properties of polyester material. The number of functional carboxylic groups formed at different steps of functionalization was evaluated using toluidine blue cationic dye. Finally, antibacterial effect of chitosan grafted polyester biomaterial was evaluated against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria cultures. The promising results revealed the effectiveness of the plasma pretreatment of polyester process in the improvement of its grafting with chitosan biopolymer.