Polyester Fabric's Fluorescent Dyeing in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide and its Fluorescence Imaging

As one of the most important coumarin-like dyes, disperse fluorescent Yellow 82 exhibits exceptionally large two-photon effects. Here, it was firstly introduced into the supercritical CO₂ dyeing polyester fabrics in this work. Results of the present work showed that the dyeing parameters such as the dyeing time, pressure and temperature had remarkable influences on the color strength of fabrics. The optimized dyeing condition in supercritical CO₂ dyeing has been proposed that the dyeing time was 60 min; the pressure was 25 MPa and the temperature was 120 °C. As a result, acceptable products were obtained with the wash and rub fastness rating at 5 or 4-5. The polyester fabrics dyed with fluorescent dyes can be satisfied for the requirement of manufacturing warning clothing. Importantly, the confocal microscopy imaging technology was successfully introduced into textile fields to observe the distribution and fluorescence intensity of disperse fluorescent Yellow 82 on polyester fabrics. As far as we know, this is the first report about supercritical CO₂ dyeing polyester fabrics based on disperse fluorescent dyes. It will be very helpful for the further design of new fluorescent functional dyes suitable for supercritical CO₂ dyeing technique.