Mordants

A mordant or dye fixative is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics or tissue sections by forming a coordination complex with the dye which then attaches to the fabric or tissue. It may be used for dyeing fabrics, or for intensifying stains in cell or tissue preparations. The term mordant comes from the present participle of French mordre, "to bite". In the past, it was thought that a mordant helped the dye bite onto the fiber so that it would hold fast during washing. A mordant is often a polyvalent metal ion. The resulting coordination complex of dye and ion is colloidal and can be either acidic or alkaline.

Mordants include tannic acid, alum, urine, chrome alum, sodium chloride, and certain salts of aluminium, chromium, copper, iron, iodine, potassium, sodium, tungsten and tin.

Iodine is often referred to as a mordant in Gram stains, but is in fact a trapping agent.

The three methods used for mordanting are:

The type of mordant used changes the shade obtained after dyeing and also affects the fastness property of the dye. The application of mordant, either pre-mordant, meta-mordant or post-mordant methods, is influenced by:

Dye results can also rely on the mordant chosen as the introduction of the mordant into the dye will have a marked effect on the final color. Each dye can have different reactions to each mordant. For example, cochineal scarlet, or Dutch scarlet as it came to be known, used cochineal along with a tin mordant to create a brilliant orange-hued red. Residual iron mordant can damage or fade fabric, producing "dye rot".

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