Self-cleaning Finishes for Functional
and Value Added Textile Materials
Subhankar Maity, Kunal Singha and Pintu Pandit
Abstract General consequences with textiles and clothing are becoming dirty after
daily use and required frequent washing with detergent and water resulting wastage
of time, money, and water. Recent trends is to develop self-cleaning textiles and
clothing which can clean themselves without water and detergent. It is a natural
tendency of textile surface to catch foreign particles as dirt as well as helps to grow
bacteria. The broader characteristics of today’s self-cleaning textiles are water and
oil repellency and anti-bacterial efficacy. Nature has plenty of evidences of such
self-cleaning effects, e.g. Lotus leaf. Learning from nature mimicking of lotus effect
can be achieved in textile substrate to achieve super hydrophobic surface that cannot
be wetted by liquid and liquid droplet rolls over the surface like a pearl and clean
the surface as well. Such self-cleaning effect can be achieved by coating the textile
substrates with some active agents as functional finish. Various nanoparticles like
TiO 2 , ZnO, Ag etc. can be applied on textile surface by various means to achieve such
self-cleaning anti-microbial effects. This chapter review those nanotechnologies,
materials, characteristics and limitations of such self-cleaning textiles in brief.
Keywords Self-cleaning · Nanotechnology · Photo-catalyst · Super-hydrophobic ·
Contact angle · Photo-catalytic · Lotus effect · Nanoparticle
1 Introduction
Self-cleaning textiles are the materials which can clean themselves without laundering. This property can be achieved in textiles by making their surface repellent to
water and soil. Water and oil repellency is related to the surface energy and contact
angle with the contact fluid. The contact angle is defined as the angle between the
S. Maity (B)
Department of Textile Technology, Uttar Pradesh Textile Technology Institute, Kanpur 208001,
India
e-mail: maity.textile@gmail.com
K. Singha · P. Pandit
Department of Textile Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Ministry of Textiles,
Govt. of India, NIFT Campus, Mithapur Farms, Patna 800001, India
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
M. Shahid and R. Adivarekar (eds.), Advances in Functional Finishing of Textiles, Textile
Science and Clothing Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3669-4_9
217
and Value Added Textile Materials
Subhankar Maity, Kunal Singha and Pintu Pandit
Abstract General consequences with textiles and clothing are becoming dirty after
daily use and required frequent washing with detergent and water resulting wastage
of time, money, and water. Recent trends is to develop self-cleaning textiles and
clothing which can clean themselves without water and detergent. It is a natural
tendency of textile surface to catch foreign particles as dirt as well as helps to grow
bacteria. The broader characteristics of today’s self-cleaning textiles are water and
oil repellency and anti-bacterial efficacy. Nature has plenty of evidences of such
self-cleaning effects, e.g. Lotus leaf. Learning from nature mimicking of lotus effect
can be achieved in textile substrate to achieve super hydrophobic surface that cannot
be wetted by liquid and liquid droplet rolls over the surface like a pearl and clean
the surface as well. Such self-cleaning effect can be achieved by coating the textile
substrates with some active agents as functional finish. Various nanoparticles like
TiO 2 , ZnO, Ag etc. can be applied on textile surface by various means to achieve such
self-cleaning anti-microbial effects. This chapter review those nanotechnologies,
materials, characteristics and limitations of such self-cleaning textiles in brief.
Keywords Self-cleaning · Nanotechnology · Photo-catalyst · Super-hydrophobic ·
Contact angle · Photo-catalytic · Lotus effect · Nanoparticle
1 Introduction
Self-cleaning textiles are the materials which can clean themselves without laundering. This property can be achieved in textiles by making their surface repellent to
water and soil. Water and oil repellency is related to the surface energy and contact
angle with the contact fluid. The contact angle is defined as the angle between the
S. Maity (B)
Department of Textile Technology, Uttar Pradesh Textile Technology Institute, Kanpur 208001,
India
e-mail: maity.textile@gmail.com
K. Singha · P. Pandit
Department of Textile Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Ministry of Textiles,
Govt. of India, NIFT Campus, Mithapur Farms, Patna 800001, India
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
M. Shahid and R. Adivarekar (eds.), Advances in Functional Finishing of Textiles, Textile
Science and Clothing Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3669-4_9
217