Effective Pretreatment Routes of Polyethylene Terephthalate Fabric for Digital Inkjet Printing of Enzyme

Abstract

Enzymes immobilized on synthetic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) textile surface by resource-efficient inkjet printing technology can promote developments for various novel applications. Synthetic fabrics often require adequate pretreatments to facilitate such printing process. This work discusses PET–woven fabric pretreatment routes to improve wettability by alkaline, enzymatic, and plasma processes for effective printing of lysozyme using an industrial piezoelectric printhead. Results indicate that all pretreated samples contain similar amount of enzymes upon printing. Plasma treated fabrics show relatively more hydrophilic surface characteristics, better protein binding stability, and lower retained activity. Alkali and cutinase-treated samples possess relatively higher activity due to greater amount of enzyme desorption to substrate solution. Depending on respective enzyme-binding stability, combination of a well pretreated surface and inkjet as preferential placement technology, the approach of this study can be used as a facile enzyme immobilization method for suitable applications, for example, controlled-release and bio-sensing.