The influence of polymers, surfactants and salt on the fine structure of cotton revealed by SANS

Cotton is the most abundantly employed material for the production of fabrics. Therefore it is very interesting to know the influence of compounds commonly in contact with cotton during the washing process, on its mesoscopic structure. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) is able to monitor structural changes in the range of 1 to a few 100 nm, making it a powerful tool to observe such changes. For that purpose we studied the change of fibre structure if exposed to low concentrations of polymer or surfactant, as they are relevant in the washing process. An interesting observation is that for the effectively available surface of cotton fibres their nanometric structure appears to be the central aspect. However, this local structure is only little affected by the presence of anionic surfactant. The same applies to a variety of polymers and only for the addition of a cationically modified cellulose a substantial increase of the thickness of the locally present rod-like structures by ∼30% is observed.

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► Investigation of influence of polymers and surfactants on cotton structure.
► Anionic surfactants/polymers, salts and nonionic polymer show no effect.
► Cationic polyelectrolyte causes thickening of mesoscopic structure.
► Relation between structure and adsorption.