Barrier textiles for protection against microbes

The presence or growth of microbes on textiles may result in a series of problems such as unpleasant odors, cross infection, disease transmission, or discoloration and deterioration of textiles. Imparting textiles with antimicrobial property can effectively eliminate these adversities and thus has been attracting great attention. This chapter summarizes the commonly used antimicrobial agents such as silver, metal oxides, photoactive dyes, quaternary ammonium compounds, N-halamines, triclosan, polybiguanides, chitosan, and plant-derived bioactive agents, their characteristics, toxicity, antimicrobial ability, ecological acceptability, and related textile finishing techniques and evaluation methods. Since durability to repeated washing is the major challenge for the practical use of antimicrobial textiles, the chapter provides details on the technique to immobilize antimicrobial agents onto fibers. In addition, impacts of using antimicrobial textiles on the environment and health are discussed in the last section.