Inkjet cartridges

Pigments and Dye

Introduction

Six Major colours of ink

Come to think of it, colors exist in our life everywhere and as a matter of fact, everything in our life has color, but did we know what colors are made of? There are six major colors that are visible to our eyes in our world: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Pigments and dye are what we used to make inks and paints. Pigments and dye have been used for millennia and undergo huge advancement especially during the early 20^th century. In the earlier years, pigments are made with ground earth or clay and mixed with spit or fat to make them into pigments. (Douma, 2008)

Different of Pigments and Dye

Generally they are quite a few way to differentiate pigments and dye. Pigments are insoluble in waters and dyes are soluble. Dyes are made solely from organic and pigments are made from inorganic materials and often involving heavy toxic metals. Because of that, food addictives are made mostly from dyes as they are safer. When comparing dyes and pigments, pigments are considerably cheaper than dyes. Pigments last longer comparing to dyes not only that, dyes need a longer period to be applied and pigments need lower time to be applied. This makes pigments as the more favored choice in printing. (Textile Classes, 2010)

Application of Dyes and Pigments

Food colouring

Dyes are available in various forms, commonly powder, liquid and pastes. As dyes are solvent, the simplest way of using dye would be dissolving the dye in the water and immersing the material within the dye solution. Dyes will then enter the materials and attach itself to the material. As mention above, textile industries is the industries that use the most number of dyes.  Foods addictives and ceramics also use dyes for their application of color.

Paint

Pigments are applied to a surface and different to dyes, pigments don’t attach to the materials. As pigments are insoluble in water, pigments often used to make paints and inks. Most notable use of pigments will be printing inks, drawing paints and wall paints. (IndiaMart InterMesh Limited, 2012)

History

With so many civilizations around the world, most of them at some point have invented ink to record and write down the information. This is necessary as they need them to pass down the knowledge and legacy. Most of the ancient cultures around the world have independently formulated inks or dye for the purposes of writing and drawing.

Ancient Chinese’s invention of ink was recorded back to 18^th century BC. They created the ink based on materials like graphite, animal glue and soot (powder-like form of amorphous carbon). India ink or masi was created by ancient India since the 4^th century BC. India ink was made of burnt bones, tar, pitch and other substances. Our modern world pen was adapted from Indian ink as the practice of sharp pointed needle as a writing method was a common practice among Indian. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 2012)

In Europe, a popular ink recipe was created around the 5^th century. The ink was made using ferrous sulfate and mixed with tannin and a thickener. This recipe was used for centuries to come until it was replaced with a new recipe at around 12^th century. This is because during this time, they no longer uses paper as their main writing instrument, instead they used parchment or vellum to record and write. The new recipe of ink used mainly of hawthorn branches. They even add wine and iron salt during the process to make it into ink.

The reservoir pen or fountain pen was created on year 953, when an Egyptian ruler, Maad al-Muizz demanded a pen that would that stain his hands or cloths and thus the pen is created. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 2012)

 Our modern day revised ink was in the 15^th century in Europe. It’s developed by Johannes Gutenberg for the printing press. Since the two type of ink available that time was unsuitable for printing, Johannes created an oily, varnish-like ink made of soot, turpentine, and walnut oil was created specifically for the printing press.

It is also during the 15^th century, where our drawing and painting flourishes with the advancement of ink manufacturing techniques. With the new oil painting formula and technique, famous artist like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael painted drawings during the oil painting revolution period, painting like The Last Supper, Entombment and the Mond Crucifixion.

Color composition

Black

In all history of ink, there have been two main ingredients of black ink. Carbon based ink and iron gall ink. Carbon ink was commonly made from charcoal, lampblack or soot and a binding agent such as gum gum arabic or animal glue. The binding agent keeps the carbon particles in suspension and sticks to the paper. The carbon particles will not fade over time or when bleached. Another benefit of carbon ink is that it is not corrosive thus is use to the paper. The ink itself is chemically stable, therefore does not threaten the strength of the paper. Despite all the benefits, carbon ink is no ideal because carbon ink has a tendency to smudge in humid environments and can be washed off with water. The best way of preserving a carbon ink written documents would be storing it in a dry environment. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 2012)

Indian dye

Iron gall didn’t become widely used until 12^th century. Iron gall was used for centuries and though as the best type of ink until they found out that iron gall is actually corrosive and damages the paper it’s written on. Since the inks are corrosive, the container of this type of ink will become brittle over time and the writing will fades from black to brown. After the discovery, the library are shocked with this discovery  as all the original journal and sciences finding reports are recorded  with iron gall ink. (Douma, 2008)

Color

 While black color inks uses mainly carbon and iron gall as their main pigment, pigment of other color are very much diversifies and different. Although the other main components like oil, resin and other additives are the same but the pigment used are very different. Pigments like carbon and iron gall are only used for the black color, but pigments for the other colors sometimes duplicate. For example, cadmium pigments are used for multiple colors such as yellow, red, orange, and even green. (Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 2012)

Pigment	Color
Cadmium	Yellow, Red, Green, Orange
Carbon	Carbon Black, Ivory Black
Chromium	Chrome yellow, Chrome Green
Cobalt	Blue, Cerulean Blue, Aureolin (yellow)
Copper	Azurite, Han Purple, Han Purple, Han Blue, Egyptian Blue, Malachite, Paris Green, Phthalocyannine Blue BN, Phtalocyanine Green G, verdigris, viridian
Iron Oxide	Sanguine, Caput mortuum, Red ochre, Venetian red, Prussian Blue
Titanium	Yellow, Beige, White, Black

(Douma, 2008)

Bibliography

1.       Carvalho, D. N. (1999). Forty Centuries of Ink. (World Wide School) Retrieved 5th July, 2012, from http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/printing/FortyCenturiesofInk/toc.html

2.       Douma, M. c. (2008). Pigments Through the Ages. Retrieved 6th July, 2012, from http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/

3.       IndiaMart InterMesh Limited. (2012). Dyes And Chemichal Applications. Retrieved 3rd July, 2012, from http://sourcing.indiamart.com/engineering/industrial-supplies/chemical-and-dyes/dyes-and-chemichal-applications/

4.       Textile Classes. (2010). What Is The Difference Between Dyes & Pigment? Retrieved 4th July, 2012, from http://articles.textileclass.com/what-is-the-difference-between-dyes-pigment/

5.       Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (2012). Retrieved 4th July, 2012, from Ink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink

6.       Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (2012). Pigment. Retrieved 6th July, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigment