Application of Nano-materials in Textile Anchor Institute (Textile Sector) 110 INFLUENCE ON THERMAL AND DYEING CHARACTERISTICS OF POLYPROPYLENE FILAMENT ON REINFORCING TiO2 NANOPARTICLES S. B. Chaudhari 1 , T. N. Shaikh 1 , B. H. Patel 2 and P. Pandey 1 1 Department of Textile Engineering, 2 Department of Textile Chemistry Faculty of Technology & Engineering, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, Gujarat, India. Presenter’s email: sats31@yahoo.com Abstract Melt spinning of pure and TiO2 nanocomposite polypropylene was successfully done on multifilament melt spinning pilot plant. Gravimetric method was adopted to vary the concentration of TiO2, in the range of 0.1% to 1% at the point of spinning. Uniformity of nanoparticles distribution in the structure was realised by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Additional groups for TiO2 were found in the basic chemical structure of polypropylene during FTIR analysis. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has shown improvement in the enthalpy ( ∆H) value of nanocomposite filament as compare to pure polypropylene filament. The value of enthalpy and thereby crystallinity of nanocomposite polypropylene filaments has increased with increase in concentration of nanoparticles. However, improved K/S value has been noticed with the increased concentration of TiO2 nanoparticles in the matrix of polypropylene. This has indicated increase in enthalpy or crystallinity on the addition of nanoparticles, attributed to higher density of TiO2 and not to the compact structure. Keywords: Nanocomposites, TiO2, SEM, FTIR, DSC, K/S value, polypropylene. Introduction Nanotechnology is a growing interdisciplinary technology often seen as a new industrial revolution. It has gained enormous interest for researchers. The main reason for this is, it provides certain solutions which are not possible otherwise. The fundaments of nanotechnology lie in the fact that the properties of materials drastically change when their dimensions are reduced to nanometre scale [1]. The properties imparted to textiles using nanotechnology include water repellence, soil resistance, wrinkle resistance, antibacterial, antistatic, UV protection, flame retardation, improvement of dyeability, electrical conductivity, etc [2-19]. Now a day’s polypropylene is a most versatile voluminous fibre due to its wide range of applicability like nonwovens, geotextiles, medical textiles, packaging material, etc. Pure polypropylene is thermally instable, non-absorbent and highly susceptible to sunlight initiated deterioration [20, 21]. Textile fibres containing additives, especially incorporated in the dimensions of a nano scale, show great potential for a wide variety of applications. One such additive that has attracted considerable commercial attention is titanium dioxide [21]. TiO2 nanoparticles, because of their larger total surface area per unit volume, provides the opportunity to exploit its unique optical, electrical and chemical attributes in synthetic fibres. Nano sized TiO2 gives enhanced thermal stability and dyeability. Present work thereby focused on the production and characterization of pure polypropylene and its TiO2 nanocomposite for thermal stability and dyeability for different proportions of TiO2 nanoparticles [13, 21-22].