With the improvement of public health protection awareness, antimicrobial textiles, which are both functional and safe, are increasingly widely used in the fields of home bedding, sports apparel, medical protection and so on. Seemingly clean textiles may become a breeding ground for germs due to the hygroscopic properties of fibers, which may cause human inflammation and other diseases, thus the development of textiles with excellent antimicrobial properties has become an important issue in the industry. Currently, the use of antimicrobial agents for functional finishing of textiles has been widely used, and the method has the advantages of convenient operation and controllable cost. Antimicrobial agent through direct contact with the bacterial surface or the release of antibacterial components to the substrate, the formation of a long-lasting antibacterial barrier on the surface of the textile to achieve the function of bacterial inhibition. Based on material properties, antimicrobial agents are mainly categorized into natural antimicrobial agents, organic antimicrobial agents and inorganic antimicrobial agents.

Natural antimicrobial agent

Natural antimicrobial agents are substances with antimicrobial activity extracted from natural plants and animals, which usually have the advantages of safe use and good biocompatibility. Natural animal antimicrobial agents include silk protein from silkworms, propolis, and chitosan extracted from insect exoskeletons and crustacean shells, etc. Natural plant antimicrobial agents include Aloe vera, Artemisia absinthium, and peppermint extract, etc. Among them, chitosan is more commonly used. Among them, chitosan is more widely used, mainly through the interaction of its positively charged amino groups with the negatively charged components of the bacterial cell membrane, inhibiting bacterial biosynthesis and leading to bacterial death. Natural plant-based antimicrobial agents usually use the alkaloids, flavonoids, quinones and polyphenols and other compounds contained therein to damage the cell membranes and cell walls of microorganisms, and to achieve bacterial inhibition and sterilization by inhibiting the processes of microbial energy supply, nucleic acid and protein synthesis. However, natural antimicrobial agents have limited heat resistance, broad-spectrum antimicrobial resistance, and short service life, and need to be further improved.

Organic antimicrobial agents

Compared with natural antimicrobial agents, organic antimicrobial agents have the advantages of broad-spectrum antimicrobial resistance, fast sterilization, convenient processing, etc., and a wide variety of types, according to the type of molecular structure of the antimicrobial components can be divided into quaternary ammonium salts, halogenated amines, imidazoles, alcohol phenol esters, guanidine, organic acids, etc.. Such as quaternary ammonium antimicrobial agents, it is positively charged in water, and negatively charged cell membrane binding to destroy the normal permeability and metabolism of the cell membrane, in order to achieve the sterilization effect, in addition to the textile as a softener and antistatic finishing aid. In the process of textile development, usually using blended spinning, electrostatic spinning, in-situ polymerization, composite spinning or grafting modification and other methods of organic antimicrobial additives to the surface of the fibers or the internal preparation of antimicrobial fibers, and further through the weaving process to obtain antimicrobial textiles; but also through the coating, impregnation, and other methods of modification of the surface of the textile directly to make it achieve the antimicrobial function.

Inorganic antimicrobial agent

Inorganic antimicrobial agents are mainly metal-based nanomaterials with large specific surface area, and their antibacterial mechanism mainly includes the generation of free radicals, particle ionization and acid formation. The inorganic antimicrobial agents studied at this stage can be mainly divided into three categories: (1) inorganic antimicrobial agents using inorganic materials as carriers and loaded with metal ions such as silver, copper, zinc and so on with antimicrobial properties; (2) inorganic antimicrobial agents prepared by using photocatalytic materials that can produce antimicrobial effects under the conditions of the light source (ZnO, ZrO2, TiO2 and so on); and (3) antimicrobial agents with metal-organic skeleton compounds (MOFs). Among them, the development and application of silver ion antimicrobial agents are more extensive, such as the silver-based ceramic additives embedded in polyester fibers by Kosa, PURECELL® silver ion acrylics by Toyo Spinning of Japan, and silver-plated fibers X-Static developed and produced by Noble Fiber Technology of the United States.