Multifunctional silica sol-gel finishing for textile fabrics

In this research the way of producing functional textile finishings by the sol-gel process is discussed. The multistep approach, consisting of consecutive depositions of sol layers on cotton fabric, is used to obtain architectures with a different number of layers. To this aim, tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) has been used as a precursor and the role of such architectures has been deeply investigated and correlated with the sol concentration and with the presence of Dibutyltindiacetate, as condensation catalyst. The results obtained should be interpreted according to the properties investigated. The higher the concentration and the number of layers of the inorganic matrix, the higher the heat protection of textile samples. To improve the mechanical properties the best results were obtained by modulating a lower concentration of the matrix using a layered approach.