DESIGN OF HIGH FASTNESS ACID DYES FOR SILK - A CHEMOMETRIC APPROACH

A chemometric strategy for the design of acid dyes for silk is reporte d. A small set of representative dyes was selected by the technique of fractional factorial design, using the principal properties of the su bstituents as design variables. The selected dyes were synthesised and fastness properties on silk were measured. Wash fastness and light fa stness values were related to the chemical structure by the partial le ast squares (PLS) method. The models were used to predict the fastness of new dyes of the same class and to optimise the structure.