Differential cotton products are highly demanded by customers to provide them with protection, while maintaining comfort during the service of the products. Protection against hazards and threats from environment, such as water, oil, chemicals, biological substances, is necessary for daily routine and for people with special missions. For this reason, protective clothing has been widely used for firefighters, mining workers, military forces and athletes. Coating is a very effective technology to bring extra functions to textiles, especially for performance textiles and coloured protective clothing the coating of extra layer is the core mechanism. Fluoro-based polymers or compounds were applied to fulfil the protection requirements of performance textiles, however, the toxic by-products from synthesis of those fluorobased chemicals have created threats to health and environment. Eco-friendly polymers are being sought for replacing the fluoro-based chemicals in the development of coating. As an example, polyurethane has been widely applied to coat textiles for different purposes. Even though the water proof membrane (WPU) and polymeric coating (TPU) can provide protection to cotton fabrics, it is important to develop versatile protection mechanism to coloured cotton fabrics. A combination of WPU using different pigments and TPU with different dyes have been used to provide a versatile protection and resolve this challenge.

This project focused on a coloured coating of waterborne polyurethane (WPU), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and trimethylated silica (TMS) on cotton fabrics by pad-knife-pad method. Different dyes/pigments were applied with TPU paste to bring colour to the coating.

The researcher was enrolled as a Research Assistant in the research group at RMIT University. The researcher conducted the experiments of coating and performed related characterisation's on the surface properties and protections of both the colour coated fabrics and TPU dyed fabrics. The data colour testing was employed to compare the shade of dyes with the pigments on the coloured fabrics. It has been found that the colour coated fabrics of WPU-PDMS-TMS has brought hydrophobicity and repellency against water, oil, chemicals and aqueous liquids. Comfort properties have also been assessed using thermal resistance and moisture management property tests. The coating technology has the potential to apply coloured cotton in protective clothing and performance textiles in different areas including military, mining and outdoor sportswear.