Investigation of antibacterial properties of polyacrylonitrile fibers modified by new functional groups and silver nanoparticles

This work reports the surface modification of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers by graft copolymerization to ensure the decoration of homogenous and dense Ag nanoparticles. Two facile and subsequent modification processes resulted in a PAN fiber composite with an intact fibrous structure, sufficiently conductive for antistatic application and antibacterial activity. In the first step, some chemically attractive monomers and monomer mixtures, such as acrylic acid (AA), AA-itaconic acid (AA-IA), AA-acrylamide (AA-AAm), were introduced to the fiber surface by grafting.