Over half of the cotton produced worldwide is dyed with reactive dyes, so called because these become covalently bound to cellulose. Cotton thus dyed does not run colour even when washed vigorously with hot water. Reactive dyes consist of two parts � a chromophore that imparts colour to but cannot react with cellulose and a colourless reactive system that can react with hydroxyl groups present in cellulose. Developing a dyestuff capable of reacting with cellulose without having a reactive system attached to it will, therefore, be a major advance in colouration technology. The new reactive system that we have developed achieves this objective. It is based on the reaction of aryl diazonium salts with alcohols to give alkyl aryl ethers, a reaction that is known for more than a century but which has hitherto never been applied to cellulose to afford O-aryl cellulose. The primary aromatic amino group, an essential ingredient for making diazonium salts, is present in an overwhelming majority of commercial azo dyes. All such azo dyes, in principle, can now become reactive dyes by application of our methodology.Our paper highlights pros and cons of this new reactive system.

Novel reactive dye system based on diazonium salts

248th National Meeting (2014)

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