Reference #: 01146
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for a method that allows liquid stains to be created on fabric in a reproducible and constant manner that greatly reduces unwanted variability between samples of different dilution or fabric type.
Invention Description:
The subject invention is a stain-barrier that can be easily applied to fabric samples to limit the amount of fabric with which the deposited liquid is able to interact. This stain barrier greatly reduces unwanted variability between samples of different dilution or fabric type so that limits of stain detection can be assigned more accurately and precisely and stain detection techniques can be transparently compared.
Potential Applications:
Stain samples are currently made without regard to the effects of different stain dilutions and substrate properties. Thus, stain detection limits are imprecisely assigned to stain detection techniques, making it difficult to compare stain detection techniques to one another. The effect of stain-dilution and substrate is minimized by application of the proposed stain-barrier. The proposed stain barrier will allow more replicable stain samples to be made, so that stain detection techniques can be accurately compared for the first time.
Advantages and Benefits:
The stain barrier created using this method insures that each stain spreads within a replicable area of the fabric, thus reducing variability between samples where different dilutions of stain and different fabric substrates are implemented. Once variation due to sample preparation is reduced, variation due to dilution, substrate and detection response can be more clearly observed. This allows more accurate limits of detection to be determined for stain detection techniques and for the first time, fair comparison of stain detection techniques to one another.
Background:
Many stain detection techniques exist (luminol, Bluestar®, fluorescein, hemascein, etc.). However, their limits of detection are not agreed upon and they are unable to be quantitatively compared to one another due to the inability to reproducibly create stain samples. The subject invention makes it possible for liquid stains to be created on fabric in a reproducible, constant manner.