Design and fabrication of bilayer polylactic acid @ secondary alkyl sulfonate/cellulose fabrics with asymmetric wettability for the electronic device packaging.

Polylactic acid (PLA) fabric is a plant-based fibrous functional material that is considered promising for application in electronic device packaging due to its unique sustainability and safety characteristics. However, the hydrophobic properties of PLA fabric with a single structure hinder its liquid asymmetric wettability. In this work, bilayer polylactic acid@secondary alkyl sulfonate/cellulose (PLA@SAS/CE) fabrics were prepared with wettability and pore size gradients across the cross direction. A carding process was used to generate the cellulose layer, whereas a melt blowing process was used for preparing the PLA@SAS microfiber layer. The fabrics were then produced using a thermal composite process. The pore sizes of the obtained PLA@SAS microfiber layer could be tuned by air pressure, whereas the surface wetting capacity could be adjusted by altering the SAS mass concentration. By optimizing the wettability and pore size gradients, the resulting PLA@SAS/CE fabrics exhibited a high one-way transport capacity of 577.7 and a favorable liquid absorption rate of 54.0 mg/s, which demonstrated excellent asymmetric wettability. Moreover, the prepared PLA@SAS/CE fabric samples exhibited a sizeable breaking strength, excellent flexibility, and good printability, while demonstrated their potential in eco-friendly electronic device packaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]