| A colorant system for ink jet printing on textiles is a major problem that must be solved for commercialization of this new technology. Polymerizable dyes are one of the possible means to solve this problem. There are two ways polymerizable dyes can be used for ink jet printing on textiles. One is to apply polymerizable dyes to the fabric with monomers and oligomers and polymerize on the fabric by UV or thermal initiation. A second way is to incorporate polymerizable dyes in resin microlattices. The goal of this investigation was to explore new approaches to development of polymerizable dye based colorant systems.; Chemical modification at certain positions on dye molecules can result in significant color change or loss in intensity of absorption. To select dyes with a minimum change in color properties, HyperChem was used to determine the effects of substitution prior to synthesis. The HyperChem predictions were shown to be useful in predicting the trend of color changes but not the absolute wavelengths of maximum absorption. Based on the predictions, Reactive Yellow 3, Acid Red 33, Reactive Red 2 and two vinylsulfonyl dyes (Reactive Blue 19 and Reactive Orange 16) were selected for modification. Four approaches were explored. These included: (I) β-1,2 elimination of vinylsulfonyl dyes, (II) Acylation of reactive chlorotriazine dyes and selected acid dyes, (III) Reaction of reactive triazine dyes with spacer ethylene diamine followed by acylation and (IV) Reaction of reactive chlorotriazine dyes with 2-hydroxy ethylacrylate.; Reactivity ratios between polymerizable dyes and resin monomers were obtained by developing a method using Lewis-Mayo equation and visible absorption data. It was concluded that by using smaller dye molecules and inserting a spacer unit, reactivity ratios can be improved for selected polymerizable dyes.; Inks for textile printing based on polymerizable dyes were formulated after the effects of ratios of [Dye]: [Total Resin], [PEGA]: [PEMA] and initiator concentration on ink properties were determined by screening studies. Properties (optical density, colorfastness, hand, etc.) of the ink jet printed fabrics were shown to be reasonable for polymerizable Yellow 3, Acid 33 and Red 2. However, in every case, dye incorporation was less than desired. Thus the deposit of large quantities of ink was required to achieve high color saturation. |
