The relationship between odour intensity and antibacterial durability of encapsulated thyme essential oil by PPI dendrimer on cotton fabrics

Abstract

The relationship between odour intensity and antibacterial properties of thyme essential oil (EO) in the presence of second generation of polypropylene Imine (PPI-G2) dendrimer as a control release agent was investigated. Odour release of thyme EO from treated fabric was measured via an electronic nose (e-nose). Staphylococcus Aureus and Escherichia Coli were considered as target bacteria to evaluate the antibacterial activity of treated fabrics. Results reveal that PPI-G2 dendrimer has strong effect on antibacterial retention under washing process and exposing to the free air. Furthermore, FTIR results show the reaction between PP-G2 and thyme EO on cotton fabrics. E-nose data also indicated that PPI-G2 provided controlled release of odour from treated fabric since the rate of odour release of samples with the dendrimer was much slower than samples without the dendrimer. It was found that e-nose results correlated with antibacterial activity with correlation coefficient of r = 0.988 for samples without PPI-G2.

Keywords:

• Thyme essential oil
• dendrimer
• antibacterial activity
• odour
• electronic nose
• controlled release

Acknowledgements

The authors would like thank to Mehdi Akbari for his kind help in arranging the e-nose system and interpretation of e-nose analyses.