Enzymatic modification of cotton fiber for promising smart medical based material

Color removal (bleaching) is an oxidation process whereby the undesirable inherent coloring component removal in organic material. Hydrogen peroxide (H
2
O
2
) is a fundamental stage of using bleaching agent in industrial and the medical field. As an oxidizing agent, H
2
O
2
has merited a significant attention since it is able to degrade reactive dyes intensively. However, the H
2
O
2
hydrolysis remain undesirable residues which leads a negative influence on fabric quality. Therefore, other alternatives method for bleaching is necessary by employing degradable materials like enzyme. Laccase is enzyme that considerable as a bio-bleaching agent for promising a smart medical based material. Therefore, in this study laccase from Trametes versicolor was used as bio-bleaching agents. The purpose of this study was to determine the potential of laccase for cotton fibers bio-bleaching. It was used H
2
O
2
as control comparison meanwhile the laccase and laccase-ABTS (mediator) as treated groups. The brightness level and the presence of functional groups of cotton fiber were characterized by spectrophotometer and FTIR respectively. The highest brightness level of cotton fiber was obtained from laccase treatment as 85.68%. Laccase bio-bleaching showed aromatic functional groups attack which was confirmed by IR spectra. The result indicated that the cotton fibers bio-bleaching using laccase is an environmental friendly process with zero remaining toxicant oxidizing agent which is very promising for medical purposes.