Abstract
Techniques for analyzing the composition of animal hair fibers in textiles are very important to guarantee the quality of animal hair yarns and fabrics. We have recently developed new methods based on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectroscopy in order to identify the animal species from the hair fibers. In this study, we assigned the animal species-specific peaks by tandem mass (MS/MS) analysis. We prepared cashmere-wool and cashmere-yak standard samples and observed very good linearity between the composition and the peak area ratio. The quantitative method was validated using nine blind-test samples containing known contents of cashmere, wool, and yak. The method was also validated by measuring various samples containing cashmere and other animal hair fibers, natural fibers and chemical fibers and by comparing the results with those obtained by optical microscopy.
