Cadmium Yellow pigments are the most durable yellow, orange and red inorganic pigments commercially available. They have excellent chemical and heat stability and can be used in chemically aggressive environments and durable applications without color fade.
Cadmium zinc sulfide pigments were developed in response to the need for stable, lighter shades of cadmium yellow. Cadmium and zinc salts of the same anion are used to form the pigment with up to about 25% zinc content.
Origin and History
When first introduced, there were few stable, bright pigments in the yellow to red range, with stable orange and bright red being very rare. The cadmium yellow pigments eventually replaced compounds such as mercury sulfide (vermilion) with improved lightfastness.
Cadmum sulfide was suggested as a pigment in 1819 by Stromeyer, but it was not commercially available until 1840s due to scarcity of metal required for its production.
Source
About half the consumption of cadmium, which is about 2,000 tons annually, is used to produce colored cadmium yellow pigments. The principal pigments are a family of yellow/orange/red cadmium sulfides and sulfoselenides as well as compounds with metals other than cadmium.
This article comes from naturalpigments edit released