Acrylic yarn art

This is the photograph of the commercially available acrylic yarn which is fluorescing under the ultraviolet light of 254 nm and 365 nm. Fluorescence is the form of luminescence in which the radiation, generally in the ultraviolet (UV) region and is invisible to the human eyes, is absorbed and is emitted in the visible region.

In the pictures, the ultraviolet light is illuminated on the acrylic yarn, the yarn absorbs the UV-light, fluoresces and emits the visible blue light which has longer wavelength and lower energy than the absorbed light. This phenomenon is called “Stokes shift.”

My research is on modifying the acrylic yarn chemically into the novel polymer, Amidoxime based Polyacrylic fiber. This polymer has the potential of removing heavy and toxic metal contaminations such as lead, cadmium etc. from water by the adsorption process. The fluorescent property of the acrylic fiber can be used to monitor the quality of the fiber as well as the efficiency of the conversion of the acrylic fiber to the novel polymer.