Glow-discharge treatment for the modification of textiles

Increased requirements on the finishing of textile products like environmental protective production, new kinds of synthetic fibers and, above all, optimized surface properties, demand innovative production technics. The advantages of the glow discharge treatment have been well known in the laboratories for a long time. Nevertheless, this technique is hardly used in the textile industry. This can be due to less knowledge about the semicontinous and continous plasma-finishing of textiles as well as an insufficent permanence of the achieved properties. On the example of water and oil repellence finishing, the optimization of the experimental parameter has been made. It can be shown that only dry textiles enables a good hydrophobic finishing. This is due to the water desorption which leads to changes of the gas phase composition. Oleophobic finishing with wash permanence could be obtained by using perfluoroacrylates. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A.