Manufacturing and characterisation of textile materials coated with zinc oxide (ZnO) obtained by sol-gel technique at low temperature

This study is based on obtaining Polyamide 6,6 nanofiber which is produced from one of the conventional synthetic textile polymers, polyamide 6,6 dissolved in formic acid via electrospinning method with appropriate parameters. Different proportions of ZnO nano powder (nano powder particle size is smaller than 50 nm) is added into Polyamide 6,6 solutions and analyzed the effects of the ZnO nano powder on nanofibers surface. In the literature, there have been many studies which aimed to developing the excellent properties of ZnO nanoparticles obtained by sol-gel particles deposited on various surfaces for antimicrobial, UV protective, anti-reflective, electrically conductive, super-hydrophobicity and photocatalytic properties. However, ZnO is annealed at high temperature in most of the work. But textile fiber materials are degradable at high temperatures. Different from the literature, in this study ZnO nanoparticles obtained by sol-gel is annealed at low temperature (100 ° C) after deposition. Polyamide 6.6 nanofiber structures containing different amounts of ZnO nano powder, were coated with 0.5 M prepared ZnO sol-gel solution via dip coating method at different speeds. The presence of the sol-jel coating and nanofiber surface has been confirmed by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) analyzed ZnO sol-gel coated nanofiber surface. Also the sol-gel coated nanofiber structure are investigated interms of the internal structure, thermal, optical, mechanical and antibacterial analyzes. The ZnO sol-gel coated nanofiber structures with the good mechanical, anti-reflective and antibacterial properties can be used as the textile material (such as sports textiles) for the inner and outer surfaces. Key words: Electrospinning, nanofiber, zinc oxide (ZnO), sol-gel, low temperature