Abstract: Mercerized cotton knitted fabrics are favored by consumers due to their smooth surface, bright color, and not easy-to-wrinkle performance. The paper explores the dyeing properties and color fastness of cotton knitted fabrics before and after mercerizing while focusing on the mercerizing quality improvement. Results indicate that the TF-107 alkali peeling penetrating agent has good resistance to alkali and alkali-resistance permeability, which can improve the uniformity of liquid caustic penetration (improve the levelness of the fabric after dyeing) by adding to the mercerizing process of cotton knitted fabrics. After mercerizing, the capillary effect of the fabric is improved; and its permeability is enhanced. Under the same dyeing conditions, the color yield of mercerized cotton knitted fabric is higher than that of non-mercerized fabric. Comparing two fabrics with the same color yield, the mercerized cotton knitted fabric can reduce the dye amount by 50%-60%. After dyeing, the vividness of the fabric increases, and the color fastness to soaping, rubbing and perspiration is improved.

Key words: mercerized cotton knitted fabric; TF-107; color yield; dye consumption; color fastness