AATCC’s UV Calibration program is designed to help users calibrate their spectrophotometers to properly measure optically brightened specimens and improve consistency and agreement amongst instruments.
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Textile optical brighteners as a group, have significantly different excitation wavelengths than the pigments used in the plastic standard. The consequence of this is that if two instruments are calibrated using the plastic standard, they may not agree on textile measurements. The opposite is also true: instruments calibrated with a textile standard may not agree on measurements of other materials. If you measure textiles, you should use an AATCC Textile UV Calibration Standard (TUVCS).
Fluorescent colorants, by their very active nature, are not stable. Their life span is limited by time, exposure, and particularly, the amount of use to which they are subjected. This is also why it is critical to keep these standards in their protective bags when not actively being used for instrument calibration. Buying multiple standards at a time to use after the expiration date is not advised and support will not be provided for standards past their expiration date.
The quality of the light in the spectrophotometer (i.e., its spectral power distribution) changes with use. The UV output of the instrument lamp diminishes over time. The filter position, which controls the percentage of UV output, must be adjusted to maintain a constant amount of total UV energy.
Depending on the age of the lamp in the instrument and the amount of use, the quantity of UV energy available may be so low that it can no longer adequately excite the fluorescent optical. Unfortunately, the loss of UV energy from the lamp is noticeable before loss of overall performance for visible illumination. The instruments can deal with lower visible lamp output because each wavelength measurement is a ratio of the total lamp output to the amount of light reflected from the sample. For fluorescent optical brighteners, this method of correction does not apply; the excitation of the fluorescent molecule is primarily a function of the total amount of UV energy at the excitation wavelengths.
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