Textile processing is an essential part of the textile manufacturing process. Majorly, it involves processing the textile through Pretreatment, Dyeing, and Finishing phases, sequentially. Pretreatment prepares the textile for the dyeing process, whereas dyeing involves using dyes and auxiliaries to provide the fabric with colors, patterns and color fastness.

Finishing is the last step of value addition in textile processing. Depending upon the desired effects and applications, many finishing chemicals are used.

Fabric Softeners – What do they do?

Fabric Softeners are finishing chemicals. Finishing textiles include textile processing that is used to create desired effects and provide functional or aesthetic benefits. The finishing process can alter a fabric’s appearance, make it more supple, or enhance its performance.

The Various Applications of Fabric Softeners

Fabrics softeners add softness and smoothness to the textile substrates and fabrics, enhancing tear strength and color shade. They also guarantee soft handling, moisture management, and improved tear resistance.
Softeners have their main effects on the fabrics’ surface. In addition to allowing the fibre to breathe, small softener molecules penetrate the fibre, forming a polymer through internal plasticization.
Softening agents are lubricating agents that allow the fibre to slide within the fabric structure, allowing for easier creasing and deformation.

TYPES OF FABRIC SOFTENERS

There are many fabric softeners depending on their chemical structure and specialized needs. Here are some of the common softeners used in the textile processing industry:

Non-ionic Softeners
Non-ionic softeners are less effective than anionic or cationic softening agents, and they remain stable in the presence of cations, anions and work in hard water. They don’t bear any charge to be used for forced applications like padding.

Anionic Softeners
Easy to wash off, Anionic softeners can be used at normal textile processing temperatures and are compatible with other dyes and bleach bath components. Made by condensation of fatty acid, they are excellent lubricating softening agents and give the fabric a full-bodied feel. They are inelastic in acid and hard water, and they also provide strong antistatic and good re-wetting effects. They are used in special applications such as medical textiles.

Cationic Softeners
Cationic Softeners are suitable for all types and can also be used in an acid environment with exhaustion (pH 4-5). These softeners tend to alter dye toning or reduce fastness when reactive and direct dyes are present.
They are easy to wash and can be used by exhaustion on all fibers in a high liquor-to-goods ratio bath.

Silicone-based Softeners
Silicone-based Softeners are insoluble in water and must be applied to fabrics after emulsification and dissolution in organic solvents. They are easy to wash and provide a smooth hand lubrication and moderately waterproof surface.
They provide high sewability, elastic resilience, and crease recovery effects. They are durable and stable at high temperatures. They have a wide range of properties, from hydrophilic to hydrophobic.

Introduction to Silicone finish

Growth of silicones particularly in textiles has been enormous over the last few decades as it imparts particular hand along with flexibility, drapability, compressibility and elastic recovery to the textile fabrics. Softening and water-repellency are almost synonymous with silicone finishing in textiles. Advancement in science and technology has thoroughly engineered the basic structure of silicones to have series of functionally modified silicones which include the family of amino, carboxy and epoxy modified silicones. This paper reviews the fundamental aspects of silicone finishing in terms of structure property relationships. It also highlights on silicones for multifunctional finishing, micro/ macro/ nano finishing and water repellent finishing.

Introduction

Keeping the colors, design and price of a garment or fabric aside, what ultimately a customer generally considers to choose a particular textile product in a retail shop is the handle and appearance of a garment. Practically everyone who examines a textile automatically touches it with their fingers to get an impression of the hand. Hence, almost all apparel and home furnishing textiles are treated with softeners. Only a few specialty fabrics do not receive a softener finish, consequently, it is easier to state which fabrics are not softened. These include wall coverings, carpeting and most industrial textiles. Therefore, softening of textiles becomes an important finishing process of many after treatment processes in a textile chemical processing industry. The hand of a fabric is a subjective sensation felt by the skin when a textile fabric is touched with the finger tips and gently compressed. Perceived softness of a textile is the combination of several measurable physical phenomena such as elasticity, compressibility and smoothness.

Almost all the natural fibres, by providence arrangement, have some percentage of wax which makes fibre naturally soft, the classical example is cotton, the most widely used fibre. However, the presence of wax both on the surface and on the bulk of fibre makes it resistant for wetting. Unfortunately, the lack of water absorbency makes the fibres unsuitable for dyeing and printing which are the primary objectives of a textile processing unit. Therefore, in order to make the fibre suitable for dyeing, various preparatory processes such as desizing, scouring, bleaching, etc. are carried out, which actually remove the natural softening agents to make the fibres more absorbent. Therefore, generally after dyeing and printing the fabrics become harsh and stiff. Finishing with softeners can overcome this deficiency and even improve on the original suppleness. The softening treatments impart soft handle (supple, pliant, sleek and fluffy), smoothness and enhance flexibility, drape and pliability. Other properties improved by softeners include the feeling of added fullness, antistatic properties and sewability.

With chemical softeners, textiles can achieve an agreeable, soft hand and some smoothness. However, the disadvantages sometimes seen with chemical softeners include reduced crock fastness, yellowing of white goods, changes in hue of dyed goods and fabric structure slippage. Most softeners consist of molecules with both a hydrophobic and a hydrophilic part. Therefore, they can be classified as surfactants (surface active agents) and are to be found concentrated at the fibre surfaces. Most softeners have low water solubility. Therefore, softening products are usually sold as oil in water emulsions containing 20-30% solids. The softener molecules typically contain a long alkyl group, sometimes branched, of more than 16 and up to 22 carbon atoms, but most have 18 corresponding to the stearyl residue. Exceptions to this molecular structure are the special categories of silicones, paraffins and polyethylene softeners. About one-third of the softeners used in the textile industry are silicone based as it imparts excellent soft hand combined with various other properties such as water repellency, superior smoothness, greasy feel, excellent body, improved crease resistance, etc. The silicones were actually first utilized by the textile industry primarily as lubricants in fibre and fabric manufacture. Silicone softeners are also applied with permanent press finishes to improve garment wear life and permanent-press finish durability. It can also be used with other finishing agents for multifunctional finishes, for example, it can be used in resin finishing of textiles to have a soft wrinkle resistant fabric.

Conclusion

Silicone finishing is becoming increasingly important in textiles as it imparts a very unique soft handle with supple, pliant, sleek and fluffy effect. It also enhances smoothness, flexibility, drape and pliability of the fabric greatly. Manipulation of the basic silicone chemistry has resulted in multifunctional finishes that not only impart the unique soft hand of silicone but also the other essential properties such as crease resistance, wrinkle resistance, leather soft effect, durability etc. Silicone nanoemulsions, as it shows improved penetrability into the textile structures produces favorable unusual soft hand and other properties that are obtained with micro and macro emulsions.