Low starch/corn silk/ZnO as environmentally friendly nanocomposites assembling on PET fabrics

Starch is a benign bio-polymeric material with a diversity of desirable functionalities namely biocompatibility and hydrophilicity features. Besides, corn silk with cellulose-protein structure can be used as an available and clean compound for medical applications. Hence, the advantages of both mentioned biocompatible compounds with potentiality to form hydrogel are considered via their combination. Up to now, there is no report on dealing with starch beside corn silk on polyester fabric in the literatures. Herein, low starch/corn silk dual hydrogel was incorporated into nano ZnO functionalized polyester fabric via a one-step simple method. Imparting flame retardant feature with no dripping, antibacterial/antifungal and self-cleaning activities with the enhanced mechanical characteristics are the advantages of the stated approach in this paper. Presence of dual hydrogel on nano ZnO treated polyester fabric helps to significantly improve the cell viability to 129% because of hydrogel feature. Finally, this paper renders a feasible and clean approach for textile functionalization with respect to the both human health issues and environmental observations.