Improving UV-cut Ability of Natural Dyed Fabrics - Focused on Cellulose Fabrics Dyed with Safflower Yellow Colorants -

The purpose of this study was to increase the ultraviolet-light (UV)-cut ability of cellulose fabrics (cotton, ramie, and rayon) dyed with safflower yellow colorants. For this purpose, samples treated with UV-cut agent and tannic-acid were compared with the untreated samples after UV exposure in terms of K/S value, color changes(), SEM, and strength retention. The K/S value rapidly decreased after 28 days exposure, whereas the K/S value of the samples treated with both UV-cut agent and tannic-acid decreased to less than that of the untreated samples. In color changes, increased while and decreased, indicating less red and yellow character in color. This induced a change in the hue, value and chroma values. However the color change() of the samples treated with both UV-cut agent and tannic-acid was less than that of the untreated samples. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) pictures showed a severe degradation by exposure in all samples. Tensile strength rapidly decreased after 28 days for cotton and rayon, and after 21 days for ramie. However, the strength retention of the samples treated with UV-cut agent and tannic-acid was higher than that of the untreated samples.