Self-cleaning properties of polyester fabrics coated with flower-like TiO₂ particles and trimethoxy (octadecyl)silane

Abstract

The presented work reported the growth of 3D-shaped TiO 2 flower particles on the surface of polyester fabrics using two step approaches of sol–gel technology and hydrothermal method. The scanning electron microscopy, EDS analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction techniques were employed to study the effect of titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) concentration on the growth of flower-like TiO 2 microstructures. Later, a layer of trimethoxy(octadecyl)silane was applied on TiO 2 -coated polyester fabrics to fabricate the self-cleaning textiles. The physical self-cleaning properties were examined based on superhydrophobicity and contact angle measurements, where maximum static contact angle of 160.1 o and minimum roll off angle of 3° was found for 2 mL TTIP concentration. The degradation of methyl orange dyes under UV light irradiation was observed to confirm the photocatalytic chemical self-cleaning behavior, where the samples coated with 2 mL TTIP decolorized the dye solution in 150 min, whereas the samples coated with 1 mL and 1.5 mL TTIP took almost 300 and 210 min, respectively.