Analysis of Contaminants on the Standard Fabric Surfaces Using XPS

Residues on fabrics in the textile process are sometimes considered to change their surface properties during dyeing and/or further functionalised treatments. In this work, common type of natural fabrics such as cotton, wool and silk, that conformed to the Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS), were studied using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to evaluate how the surface state after scouring affects its dyeability on the fabrics. Five scouring methods referred from JIS and some reports were examined: 1. boiling for 10 minutes in distilled water, 2. boiling for 6 hours using hexane in a Soxhlet extractor, 3. boiling for 6 hours using hexane in a Soxhlet extractor, then washing for 1 hour using distilled water at 90 ̊C, 4. ultra-sonic washing using 1 wt% sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) aq. at 40 ̊C for 10 minutes, then ultra-sonic washing using distilled water at 40 ̊C for 5 minutes as rinsing, and 5. ultra-sonic washing using distilled water at 40 ̊C for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, the standard fabrics were also examined the dyeability using a direct dye C. I. Direct Red 28. Surface reflectance spectra were taken using an ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), then K/S values were calculated to consider any correlation between the K/S values and surface states which were obtained by XPS. The XPS results show the scouring treatments cannot remove silicone completely from the fabric surfaces, on the other hand, the results of dye uptakes and dyeabilities by UV-Vis show no significant differences between as received and scoured samples. In conclusion, the scouring methods, that were validated in this work, make almost no influence on their dyeability of the standard fabrics.