Phenol compounds treated cotton and wool fabrics for developing multi-functional clothing materials

Phenolic compounds found in many plant-based natural antioxidants inhibit pathogenic growth and are not normally toxic to humans. Therefore, in this study we treated cotton and wool fabrics with phenolic compounds through a pad-dry-cure process and investigated the mechanical properties, antibacterial ability, and antioxidant ability of the fabric samples. Polycarboxylic acid was used to cross-link the phenolic compounds to cellulose, whereas wool fabric did not need a cross-linker because the phenolic compounds easily bond to protein naturally. Consequently, both the cotton and wool fabric samples treated with phenolic compounds revealed excellent antibacterial ability against gram-positive bacteria (>99.9 %) as well as gram-negative bacteria (>99.5). However, with regard to the antioxidant ability, all of the wool fabrics treated with phenolic compounds showed significant antioxidant ability (>90 %); however, the antioxidant ability of most of the cotton fabrics treated with phenolic compounds were insufficient (>35 %). This suggests that the cotton fabrics treated with phenolic compounds lost their hydroxyl groups by cross-linking with polycarboxylic acid, causing phenolic moieties also to lose their antioxidant function.