Substrate-Free Pearlescent Pigments

7.2.2.1 Natural Pearl Essence

Natural pearl essence is isolated as a silky lustrous suspension from fish scales. The pigment particles in the suspension are platelet shaped with a very high aspect ratio (0.05 pm x 1-10 pm x 20-50 pm), and consist of 75-97% guanine and 3-25% hypoxanthine [4, 6-8].

To date there is no commercial synthetic process for producing similar platelet­shaped products of such brilliance. One is therefore limited to a process based on the natural supply. An aqueous suspension of white fish scales is treated with organic solvents in a complicated washing and phase-transfer process to remove proteins and irregular guanine crystals. One ton of fish yields less than 250 g of guanine. The pigment particles show a high tendency to agglomerate and are, therefore, only handled as dispersions.

Natural pearl essence is very expensive but shows some advantages over syn­thetic pearlescent pigments. For example, it shows a high but soft luster (nD = 1.79 (parallel) to 1.91 (perpendicular)), It is not brittle and has a relatively low den­sity of 1.6 g/cm3, which reduces settling in liquid formulations. It is almost exclu­sively used in expensive cosmetic applications.

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