ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews and discusses the application of plasma treatment and its effect on the printing of cellulosic, protein and synthetic fibres.
In the research of applying plasma treatment on cellulosic fibre, especially in cotton printing, most studies were focused on digital ink-jet printing because the plasma treatment can enhance the application of pretreatment paste coating on the cotton fabric before digital ink-jet printing (Yuen et al. 2004). Figure 7.1 shows that the colour yield of the plasma-treated cotton fabrics subjected to digital ink-jet printing with reactive dye under different plasma treatment time was higher than that of the untreated fabric (Yuen and Kan 2007). The colour yield increased gradually with plasma treatment time and reached the maximum at 2 min of treatment time. Further increase of plasma treatment time did not give further enhancement of the colour yield, but instead resulted in a gradual reduction in colour yield.
