Photografting of polyacrylamide hydrogel coating onto various polyethylene terephthalate textiles

Abstract

In this paper, polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogels grafted via photopolymerization onto various types of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as matrix were designed and synthesized. The investigation was carried out based on thickness (0.02 -0.07 mm) of nonwoven PET textiles from various resources as well as commercial PET membrane. In this study, PET matrices with a disk shape of 4.5 cm in diameter were coated with thin hydrogel using UVA photopolymerization system. The resulting grafted PAAm-g-PET was examined through degree of grafting (DG) and characterized by using Fourier Transformed Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). The DG above 50 % results showed the ability of PAAm hydrogel to be grafted onto PET. The various range of thickness and surface of PET also gave an impact onto the performance of grafting of PAAm onto PET. FTIR results also confirmed the addition of amide group after grafting process (1720 cm -1, 1100 cm-1, 850 cm-1). The hydrophilicity of hydrogels was reported to impart oil fouling resistance. We expect that grafted hydrogel layer has fascinating future for oil/water separation.