Learning from hair moisture sorption and hysteresis

Hair relaxation after shaping - A kinetic approach

OBJECTIVE

Hair fibres have been shaped via either a thermal route or via a chemical route. The time-relaxation transients of the shaped hairs in air, and in water, respectively, were evaluated. The collected data were kinetically modelled in order to reveal information about the rate controlling mechanism of the recovery process.

METHODS

Hair fibres were thermally shaped at different temperatures between heated plates and left to relax in an environment of controlled humidity and temperature. Different hair fibres were chemically shaped and left to relax in water of different controlled temperatures. Relaxation data were used for modelling the kinetics of the recovery processes by using exponential and logarithmic kinetic laws. The fitting of the models to the two sets of data has been checked by using the residual sum of squares for matching the proper model to each set of data.

RESULTS

The processes of shaping and recovery were assimilated with a sequence of two successive quasi-chemical reactions, occurring at the used temperatures. Based on chemical and physical assumptions, the two groups of experiments were modelled by two different laws: an exponential law, suggesting a first-order process as the rate-determining step of the relaxation of thermally shaped fibres, and a logarithmic law, suggesting a slow relaxation, based on percolation theory, for the chemically shaped fibres. This allowed use of chemical kinetics tools for calculating the values of the activation energy in each case. The evaluated values of activation energy of the relaxation processes for both thermal and chemical shaping were found to be close to each other, in spite of the different methods of shaping.

CONCLUSION

The kinetic analysis suggests that despite different reaction sequences occurring during the different shaping-relaxation processes, the rate-controlling mechanism that manages the recovery process is the same in all cases; and this process is proposed to be the thiol-disulphide reformation of intra-protein bonds inside hair.

Unveiling moisture transport mechanisms in cellulosic materials: Vapor vs. bound water

Natural textiles, hair, paper, wool, or bio-based walls possess the remarkable ability to store humidity from sweat or the environment through "bound water" absorption within nanopores, constituting up to 30% of their dry mass. The knowledge of the induced water transfers is pivotal for advancing industrial processes and sustainable practices in various fields such as wood drying, paper production and use, moisture transfers in clothes or hair, humidity regulation of bio-based construction materials, etc. However, the transport and storage mechanisms of this moisture remain poorly understood, with modeling often relying on an assumption of dominant vapor transport with an unknown diffusion coefficient. Our research addresses this knowledge gap, demonstrating the pivotal role of bound water transport within interconnected fiber networks. Notably, at low porosity, bound water diffusion dominates over vapor diffusion. By isolating diffusion processes and deriving diffusion coefficients through rigorous experimentation, we establish a comprehensive model for moisture transfer. Strikingly, our model accurately predicts the evolution of bound water's spatial distribution for a wide range of sample porosities, as verified through magnetic resonance imaging. Showing that bound water transport can be dominant over vapor transport, this work offers a change of paradigm and unprecedented control over humidity-related processes.