Application of boron compounds to polyacrylonitrile fabrics by environmentally friendly methods

In this study, boron oxide and boric acid were used to impart flame retardant property to comonomer containing polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fabrics. Boron compounds were applied to fabrics by using various combinations of the atmospheric plasma modification and sol-gel methods. After the treatments, ignition times of the atmospheric plasma and sol-gel treated fabrics were compared with conventional padding process. Ignition times of all the samples treated with boron oxide and boric acid has increased, but the highest increase was obtained after the plasma+sol-gel method. The properties of fabrics were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Infrared Fourier Transform (FT-IR) analysis. SEM images and FT-IR spectrums of the treated samples has shown the presence of boron in all samples treated under various conditions. TGA thermograms have shown that the boron compounds increased the onset temperature of the PAN fabrics