When dealing with HP Vivera inks, or maybe just with looking at them in a store, chances are you've seen something on the packaging that states that they are the best when it comes to resisting the light-fade effect that happens to a lot of photos that are printed through a printer at home. Light-fade is simply when prolonged exposure to either natural or artificial light slowly causes the ink to fade and therefore the picture to fade along with it.

HP claims that their Vivera inks are able to withstand this light-fade effect and that pictures printed with the photos will last for a century. If you follow the link that they provide in support of this claim, you will see a study done by Wilhelm Research; a light-fade experiment. This experiment did indeed show the results that HP discusses on the packaging of Vivera inks; namely that they last a very long time and are extremely resistant to light-fade.

Why exactly is this something that is unique to Vivera inks? Well, in order to discover that, you need to go a bit deeper and take a look at the science behind the ink mixing that goes into Vivera inks and how that science specifically related to the phenomenon known as light-fade.

There are two primary things that affect the resistance of an ink particle to light-fade; the size of the particle itself as well as the chemicals that go into the particle. The size of the particle matters specifically because the larger the particle, the less able it is to hold onto its electrons; all other things being equal. Different chemicals have different abilities to hold onto electrons and therefore it really becomes an optimization game between the size of each ink particle and the chemicals that are mixed together in order to create the particle in the first place.

Why is holding onto electrons so important? Well, part of the work of Albert Einstein, the famous physicist, consisted of describing a natural phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect. This essentially states that when light photons hit a surface, that surface tends to lose electrons because of it. In other words, light has the ability to change the make up of a particle and when it does this to the ink particles, the electrons are released from the ink particles and the order and arrangement of the particles is then subsequently affected as well. Because of uneven electron distribution, ink particles move back and forth to make up for it and the texture of the picture changes, resulting in the light-fade that is infamously annoying in home printed pictures.

Ultimately, HP Vivera inks are created with an optimal level of particle size and chemical makeup so that the light-fade phenomenon is less effective.