Effects of Crosslinking Sericin on the Color Fastness and Antioxidant Activity of Naturally Colored Silk

• Published in: Fibers and polymers 2022, 23(3), , pp.658-665
• Main Authors: Lv, Zongyu, Tan, Ting, Hussain, Munir, Zhou, Wenlong, Ma, Mingbo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antioxidants; Biomedical materials; Calcium chloride; Catalysts; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Color fastness; Crosslinking; Epoxy resins; Fixing; Polyethylene glycol; Polymer Sciences; Reaction time; Silk; Textiles; Washing; Wet processing; 섬유공학
• ISSN: 1229-9197; 1875-0052
• DOI: 10.1007/s12221-022-3082-y

Naturally colored silk (NCS) fades easily during wet processing and home washing due to the loss of pigment, which is accompanied by dissolution of the sericin layer. This study proposed a green and effective strategy for fixing the sericin of NCS to improve the color fastness of NCS textiles under wet conditions. The sericin of NCS was crosslinked with a bifunctional epoxy resin, poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PEGDE), in the presence of calcium chloride as a catalyst. The influences of the concentrations of PEGDE and the catalyst, pH, temperature, and reaction time on the crosslinking effect were investigated. The results showed that crosslinking NCS under optimum conditions could result in a 5.11 % weight gain. After crosslinking, the pigment in the sericin layer exhibited a considerable fixation fastness under wet conditions due to the low solubility of the crosslinked sericin. The K/S value of crosslinked NCS decreased by only 15.9 % after washing 15 times, which is much lower than that of uncrosslinked NCS (43.8 %). Crosslinking of NCS also improved its antioxidant capacity retention against repeated home washing. This study proposed an effective sericin-crosslinking strategy that could be used not only for fixing the color of NCS but also for sericin-grafted textiles and sericin-based biomaterials.