Until the middle of the 19 th century, natural fibres, wool, flax and cotton
have been used for commercial and other purposes. During the industrialization times,
they began to research how to improve the characteristics of fibres to extend their use.
This resulted in the use of artificial fibres. They adhered polymer chains to the fibres
and thus improved their characteristics and extended their use. This procedure of adding
new polymer chains to the existing chains or fibres is called grafting. By altering the
characteristics of natural fibres, their use grew and extended in agriculture, textile
industry and other industries.
The thesis thoroughly describes types of grafting on natural fibres, namely
cellulose fibres. Among these techniques, grafting reaction with the help of the
following polymerizations are prevailing: atom transferred radical polymerization,
nitroxide-mediated polymerization and reversible addition-fragmentation chain-
transferred polymerization.
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