Modern Colorants

Although the research actIvItIes of dyestuff chemists worldwide have been influenced to a great extent, in recent years, by the need to respond to a variety of environmental issues associated with the manufacture and application of synthetic dyes and pigments, a significant level of targeted research continues to be devoted to new chemistry aimed at enhancing the technical properties of dyes in commerce. This book is a presentation of various aspects of basic research conducted during the past decade but not reported in the recent review literature. The coverage herein is unique in that it emphasizes systematic approaches commonly utilized in the design and synthesis of dyes and pigments and the required intermediates. While it is well known that certain transition metals are important in the synthesis of technically viable metallized dyes for polyamide and protein fibers, these metals are demonstrated in Chapter 1 also to be effective agents in the regiospecific placement of substituents into azo compounds. The scope and limitations of this chemistry are presented. In other synthetic work, a description of the different processes employed to produce the major families of reactive dyes is presented. In Chapter 4, special attention is given to reactive dyes containing more than one reactive group, and to the more recent developments in the field. The two chapters which follow provide a review of the recent literature pertaining to novel chromophores and dyes for the D2T2 process, respectively.