Development of Mosquito Repellent Cotton/Modal Blend Summer Clothing Fabric

Abstract

Cotton/modal blended fabrics are very popular due to good sweat absorption and being very soft; however, they lack very good mosquito repellent. There are so many studies on the application of microcapsules to cotton fabrics; however, no study has been found on cotton/modal blends. In the study, microcapsules were prepared by selecting gum arabic as the shell material and lemongrass oil as the core material and the developed microcapsules were characterised by FTIR analyzes, light microscope and particle size analysis. The microcapsules were applied to the cotton/modal blend fabric by the impregnation method and assessed for their coating, and fly repellent properties. It is found that the average diameter of the microcapsules was 1.75 μm; average zeta potential was − 21.9, which means that the prepared microcapsule solutions are moderately stable. The fly protection values up to 70% were obtained with the microcapsules containing natural lemongrass oil used in this study.