Disperse dyeing and antibacterial properties of nylon and wool fibers using two novel nanosized copper(II) complexes bearing phosphoramide ligands

Disperse dyeing of nylon and wool fibers with two new nanosized copper(II) complexes including phosphoric triamide ligands with formula Cu(NO3)2L2 (1) and Cu(CH3COO)2L2 (2) where L = 4-NO2C6H4NHP(O)(NC4H8O)2 (A) was performed successfully. Both complexes 1 and 2 produced yellow and green colored nylon and wool fabrics, respectively. The complexes were synthesized by ultrasonic method and characterized by 1H, 13C, 31P NMR, Fourier-transform infrared, photoluminescence, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, field-emission microscopy and elemental analysis. The FE-SEM micrographs revealed that the nanoparticles of these compounds are spherical in morphology and ∼17-20 nm in size. Very appropriate washfastness while poor lightfastness results were deduced for the dyed fibers. The in vitro antibacterial activities of the dyes 1, 2 and dyed wool/nylon fibers against the Gram-positive Bacillus subtilis bacterium illustrated increasing in the antibacterial effect by increasing the dye concentration from 0.1% to 0.5% o.w.f. on both wool and nylon dyed fibers.