Improvement of dyeability of cotton with natural cationic dye by plasma grafting

Cotton fabric is usually dyed with anionic dyes such as direct and reactive dyes. Naturally, there is no affinity for basic dyes to cotton fiber. In this study, to improve the dyeability of cotton fiber with cationic dyes, the fabric was pretreated with air plasma and grafted with acrylic acid to create acidic groups on the surface of cotton fibers. The grafted samples were dyed with natural cationic dye extracted from roots of berberis vulgaris. The effect of plasma treatment and grafting of acrylic acid on the color strength of cotton fabric was studied.