DOE develops textile marking system - sportstextiles: Lea SportsTextiles

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DOE develops textile marking system

27/07/2005
Hong Kong’s Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has announced the development of a textile marking system to track the presence of US-made yarns and fabrics in apparel imports. The system will ensure the use of US fabrics and yarns in apparel products imported under US preference programmes and free trade agreements.

The system is based on a near-infrared material that can be used as a marker, geometric figure, or barcode, with millions of letter and number combinations. The marker, which can only be read by special scanners, identifies the source, type, production conditions, and composition of textile material.
The system is reportedly far less expensive than other information encoding systems such as the use of DNA or radio frequency identification (RFID) and may also offer advantages such as no impact on material properties and multiple uses at a lower cost.

The next phase of the project will involve field tests to identify whether the marker has an effect on the fabric quality. In addition, researchers will investigate the optimum method for applying the tag to the material.

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