Biocoat

Development of bio-based textile finishes for high performance textiles.

motivation

Coatings and finishes are widely used in the textile industry to create water repellency and resistanceas well as antimicrobial and fast drying effects or flame retardancy. Thus, increasing the benefit of apparel as such. Unfortunately, some of these effects are generated by environmentally hazardous chemicals, supposed to be restricted by regulatory bodies in the years to come. Moreover, the majority of the textile finishes today are made of non-renewable resources and cannot be biodegraded in nature. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to find bio-based and environmentally friendly alternatives, when developing bio-based textiles. Inspired by the BIOTEXFUTURE vision of a sustainable bio-based textile industry, this project focusses on finishes and coatings used for textiles.

Aim

The aim of the project is to replace conventional fossil-based textile finishes with the bio-based ones.

BIOCOAT VISUALIZED

APPROACH

In this project, two conventional finishes are selected in collaboration with the industrial partners as the project focus. The project uses nature-derived molecules called ‘peptides’ and nature-inspired innovative process (called ‘directed evolution’) to try to come up with a bio-based and biodegradable material that can replace the conventional chemistry used in textiles today. If successful, the project will demonstrate the feasibility of using this approach to replace conventional textile finishes.

The demonstration will be done on two selected product types, but the learnings are intended to be relevant for other products and textile sectors.

Results

Protein-based BioCoatings (antimicrobial and hydrophilic) were successfully developed at DWI and initial evaluation trials on a laboratory scale were performed by the project partners adidas and Frohn. It was found that the identified textile-binding peptides, did not detach even after multiple washes and the wash resistance of the peptides could be further increased through the nature-inspired optimization process called ‘directed evolution’..

The developed antimicrobial coating resulted in a significant reduction (killing 99.998%) of pathogenic bacteria that were in contact with the functionalized textile. The developed hydrophilic coating was stable over multiple washing cycles (>10) and we showed that the coating positively influenced key parameters of moisture management (e.g. water transport). This can reduce the negative impact of perspiration on functional sportswear, for example.

The key results described above show that the objective of the BioCoat project has been fully

Project Partners

GET IN TOUCH

Dr. Felix Jakob jakob@dwi.rwth-aachen.de

Dr. Elisabeth Heine heine@dwi.rwth-aachen.de

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