Surface Modification of Kosa Silk Fiber by Graft Copolymerization with Vinyl Benzyl Trimethylammonium Chloride (VBT) and Its Antibacterial Study

The recent outbreak of Covid-19 has led to great awareness about microbial infections which have emerged as one of the most challenging threats to human life during the pandemic times. While exploring the antibacterial properties in a variety of compounds, quaternary ammonium compounds (QAC) have been recognized as a potential class of antibacterial compounds. In the present study, surface modification of Kosa silk was achieved by graft copolymerization of vinyl benzyl trimethyl ammonium chloride (VBT) by redox polymerization, employing ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as an initiator in the presence of nitric acid as catalyst. The grafted silk material was characterized by various analytical techniques like SEM, DSC, FTIR, and XRD. The KS-g-VBT was evaluated for its antibacterial potential by employing S. aureus and E. coli bacteria following the Agar well method. It was observed that the grafted Kosa silk inhibited the growth of Gram-positive (S. aureus) and Gram-negative (E. coli) bacteria.