Biomechanical surface roughness analysis of ramie-low melt polyester nonwovens exposed to plasma

Abstract

This study aims to characterize ramie-low melt polyester nonwoven fabrics treated with low-temperature plasma and to analyze 3-D images based on object-depth mapping (ODM) using the MATLAB® R2022a software. We examined the low-temperature plasma treatment of nonwoven ramie fabrics using a plasma generator with 30 kV output power, six-minute treatment times, and a 4.5 cm distance between electrodes. The fabric’s chemical properties and surface topography were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). An analysis of the SEM images was performed using a statistical approach and image processing to determine the level of surface roughness. FTIR analysis revealed that fabrics exposed for six minutes differed from those that were not. Our findings indicated that plasma treatment caused the following: 1) Ramie fabrics to become more hydrophilic, as shown by their increased T% in the FTIR of hydrophilic functional groups such as hydroxyl (O-H), carboxyl (-COOH), and carbonyl (C=O); 2) A higher surface roughness was observed in nonwoven fabric during SEM testing and image processing; 3) Plasma treatment of fabrics resulted in a higher coefficient of variation (CV) than untreated fabrics; 4) Nonwoven fabric mass reduction. Based on this study, we found the relationship between plasma-treated ramie fabric and textiles in biomechanics. Plasma treatment reduced the mass of ramie fabric by 0.11 %, according to our findings. We found that the greater the mass reduction, the greater the surface roughness value. The novelty of this study is the use of 3-D images based on object-depth mapping (ODM) using the MATLAB® R2022a software in SEM to observe surface roughness to the physical properties of ramie fabric for the first time.