The Effect of Combined Atmospheric Plasma/UV Treatments on Improving the Durability of Flame Retardants Applied to Cotton.

Application of a combined atmospheric plasma/UV laser to cotton fabrics impregnated with selected non-durable flame retardants (FRs) has shown evidence of covalent grafting of the latter species on to cotton fibre surfaces. As a result, an increase in their durability to water-soaking for 30 min at 40 °C has been recorded. Based on previous research plasma gases comprising Ar80%/CO220% or N280%/O220% were used to pre-expose cotton fabric prior to or after FR impregnation to promote the formation of radical species and increased −COOH groups on surface cellulosic chains, which would encourage formation of FR-cellulose bonds.

Fabrication of living soft matter by symbiotic growth of unicellular microorganisms.

We report the fabrication of living soft matter made as a result of the symbiotic relationship of two unicellular microorganisms. The material is composed of bacterial cellulose produced in situ by acetobacter (Acetobacter aceti NCIMB 8132) in the presence of photosynthetic microalgae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cc-124), which integrates into a symbiotic consortium and gets embedded in the produced cellulose composite. The same concept of growing living materials can be applied to other symbiotic microorganism pairs similar to the combination of algae and fungi in lichens, which is widespread in Nature.