| AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Applied Surface Science | Thursday Sessions |
| Session AS-ThP |
| Session: | Applied Surface Science Poster Session |
| Presenter: | K.G. Lloyd, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences |
| Authors: | K.G. Lloyd, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences S. Brown, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences L. Zhang, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences J.R. Marsh, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences D.E. Davidson, DuPont Corporate Center for Analytical Sciences T. Madeleine, DuPont |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Water and soil repellency confer a distinct advantage to apparel. A number of processing steps are required to produce water-repellent fabrics. The original fiber spin finish is needed for fabric weaving but then must be removed (though rarely completely) prior to water-repellent treatment. The composition of water-repellent formulations varies among different formulators and even from a single formulator over time. In addition to fluorocarbons with different polymer backbones and different fluorocarbon tail lengths/distributions, water-repellent formulations may also include so-called “extenders” or performance enhancers. Drying and curing steps are typically required.
Surface characterization plays a critical role in understanding water repellency. This presentation will focus on the surface analytical methodologies developed to help correlate formulation and processing variables to repellency performance. These include the use of multivariate statistics with ToF-SIMS mapping data to quantify fluorocarbon coverage as well as to understand the effect of “uncoated” surface character. These results will be combined with fabric surface energetics measurements to yield a more complete picture of the fabric treatments.