Fundamentals of dye absorption

Abstract

During the last ten or fifteen years scientific effort, emerging from a highly successful empirical attack on the synthesis of artificial coloring matters, has been increasingly directed toward the problem of understanding how and why the colors become fixed to the fibers. Industry, pioneered by the academic research worker, has evolved and selected by a long and painstaking process of trial and error, substances which possess the necessary attributes of high color intensity, resistance to sunlight, and affinity for the fiber. The understanding of the last named, which is essentially a physieo-chemical problem, has now reached the stage where we may profitably pause and survey the ground thus far gained. Before 1930, the description of dye affinity was qualitative, depending on comparative color tests (so called dyeing trials), interpreted by the unaided human eye and classified, by a wholly subjective process, as good, medium or poor. It was, therefore, apparent that no useful attempt could be made to apply the principles of physical chemistry to the problem, since verification always depends upon quantitative data, which in this case were lacking.