Grafting of Wool with Alginate Biopolymer/Nano Ag as a Clean Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Agent: Characterization and Natural Dyeing Studies

There is a continuous search for green and sustainable materials and processes in textile dyeing and finishing. In the current study, wool yarns were grafted with Sodium Alginate-Silver nanoparticles (SA-Ag NPs) and consecutively dyed with Cochineal or Madder. The weight gain of the samples was measured to find the optimized SA-Ag NPs initial concentration, and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to study their surface morphology. The effects of the initial dye concentration, pH, temperature on the color strength of the dyed samples were investigated. It was found that the pretreatment enhanced the dye-ability, antimicrobial, and antioxidant characteristics of the samples noticeably. Under the same dyeing conditions, the fixation of dyes on the treated wool fibers was noticeably higher than that of the untreated wool fibers. The colorfastness characteristics of the treated samples dyed with Cochineal or Madder were slightly improved. The results clearly showed that the application of SA-Ag NPs on the wool samples could be considered as a green finishing process with promising antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. A very high level of antimicrobial efficiency (99%) was achieved after the pretreatment, which remained as high as 90% even after ten repeated washing cycles.