UV paint

Oct 08, 2013 3 Replies
J

I bought a six-pack of UV glow paint on ebay...



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and tried pulsing all the colors with a 365 nm UV led.



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I measured the light on my trusty PH200 o/e converter. If I move the card around so that the PH sees just the UV bouncing off the card, I get hardly any signal. There is some visible blue light coming from the LED, and even a bit of orange. The PH response peaks around 900 nm and is basically dead at 365.



I can slide the card to whack the various phosphors. The orange was best, giving over 10x the response from the LED alone. The two reds were almost as good, and the others were pretty wimpy.



What's interesting is the risetime, about 100 ns, which is the native PH200 step response. So these cheap phosphors are fast.



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These phosphors are more efficient cold, maybe 15% better if spritzed with freeze spray.



John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
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D

Some will glow better with a UV fluro tube rather than an LED (its a different wave length)

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J

That wavelength is a bit short for most cheap phosphors. Try 400-410nm. regds. JB

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J

I'm actually interested in converting wavelenghts that regular silicon photodiodes can't see, in the 200-400 range. I'm just playing around at this point. I also don't know if UV will damage these phosphors, long-term. I'd probably buy "professioal" phosphors if this ever became real. Still, these cheap ones are impressive.

The shortest wavelength LED that I can easily get is 355. An LED is a good source because I can get fast, clean pulses out of it.

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
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