Surface characterisation of low temperature plasma-treated wool fibre

Previous investigation results revealed that after the low temperature plasma (LTP) treatment, the hydrophilicity of wool fibres was improved significantly. Such improvement enhances the wool dyeing and finishing processes which might be due to the changes of the wool surface to a more reactive one. In this paper, wool fibres were treated with LTP with different gases, namely oxygen, nitrogen and gas mixture (25% hydrogen/75% nitrogen). Investigations showed that chemical composition of wool fibre surface varied differently with different plasma gas used. The surface chemical composition of the LTP-treated wool fibres was characterised with different characterisation methods, namely FTIR-ATR, XPS and saturated adsorption value. The experimental results of these methods were thoroughly discussed.