Environmentally friendly antibacterial cotton textiles finished with siloxane sulfopropylbetaine.

This paper reports a novel environmentally friendly antibacterial cotton textile finished with reactive siloxane sulfopropylbetaine(SSPB). The results show that SSPB can be covalently bound onto the cotton textile surface, imparting perdurable antibacterial activity. The textiles finished with SSPB have been investigated systematically from the mechanical properties, thermal stability, hydrophilic properties and antibacterial properties. It is found that the hydrophilicity and breaking strength are improved greatly after the cotton textiles are finished with SSPB. Additionally, the cotton textiles finished with SSPB exhibit good antibacterial activities against gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus, ATCC 6538), gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli (E.coli, 8099) and fungi Candida albicans (C.albicans, ATCC 10231). Moreover, SSPB is nonleachable from the textiles, and it does not induce skin stimulation and is nontoxic to animals. Thus, SSPB is ideal candidate for environmentally friendly antibacterial textile applications.