Dendrimer Technology for Water and Oil Repellent Cotton Textiles

The aim of this study was to determine whether dendrimer-based products can replace classic fluorocarbon-based products in water repellent, woven cotton fabrics. Furthermore, the effect of adding a dendrimer to a fluorocarbon product on the resulting water and oil repellency was studied. For that purpose, fluorocarbon, dendrimer, and dendrimer-fluorocarbon mixture-based commercial products were applied to cotton fabrics using the pad-dry-cure method. Repellency performance and wash resistance of these chemi-cals were investigated. It was found that the same water repellency values could be obtained in lower concentrations or under milder curing conditions using the dendrimer-fluorocarbon mixture-based product compared to that of the fluorocarbon-based product.