Cotton fabrics with zinc oxide (ZnO) coating are of significant interest due to their excellent antibacterial performance. Thus, they are widely in demand in the textile industry due to their medical and hygienic properties. However, conventional techniques used to deposit ZnO on fabric require long processing times in deposition, complex and expensive equipment, and multiple steps for deposition, such as a separate process for nanoparticle synthesis and subsequent deposition on fabric. In this study, we proposed a new method for the deposition of ZnO on fabric, using cathodic cage plasma deposition (CCPD), which is commonly used for coating deposition on conductor materials and is not widely used for fabric due to the temperature sensitivity of the fabric. The effect of gas composition, including argon and a hydrogen-argon mixture, on the properties of ZnO deposition is investigated. The deposited samples are characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, photocatalytic, and antibacterial performance against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. It is observed that ZnO-deposited cotton fabric exhibits excellent photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue and antibacterial performance, specifically when a hydrogen-argon mixture is used in CCPD. The results demonstrate that CCPD can be used effectively for ZnO deposition on cotton fabric; this system is already used in industrial-scale applications and is thus expected to be of significant interest to garment manufacturers and hospitals.
Keywords: antibacterial properties; cathodic cage plasma deposition; cotton fabric; photocatalytic properties; zinc oxide nanoparticles.