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posted by martyb on Friday August 07 2020, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-bright-I-gotta-wear-shades dept.

Scientists Create Unbelievably Bright Fluorescent Objects:

New research published today in the scientific journal Chem describes a newly developed material, dubbed SMILES, that can be transformed into a solid, crystalline state with an unusually bright fluorescent glow when seen under ultraviolet light.

[...] The development of solid fluorescent materials represents somewhat of a holy grail for chemists owing to a phenomenon called “quenching.” This happens when fluorescent dyes, after entering into a solid state, get squished together, producing a muted glow. This close proximity causes interference, and the dyes stop behaving as stand-alone ingredients. Sadly, “when putting dyes into solids, they couple together and stop fluorescing—they also change color in unpredictable ways,” said Flood.

To solve this problem, Flood, with the help of co-author Bo Laursen from the University of Copenhagen, took colored dyes and mixed them with a colorless solution containing a star-shaped molecule known as cyanostar. This worked to prevent unwanted interactions between the fluorescent dyes as the formula was transformed into a solid state, allowing the dyes to retain their fluorescent qualities. The solid mixture, a state known as SMILES, or small-molecule ionic isolation lattice, essentially resulted in a lattice-like structure, within which the dyes could remain intact and isolated.

[...] “We allow the process to become foolproof by offering design rules,” he said, adding that the critical breakthrough was to “explore ideas of hierarchical self-assembly, or, how to make solids form regular lattices.” Key to this were the cyanostars, which have no color. As a consequence, “they produce the checkerboard lattice but play no other role than one of isolation,” so in the solid, the dyes “no longer interfere with each other to turn off the fluorescence and change the color,” Flood explained.

A primary application of brighter fluorescent materials would be amusement park "dark rides".

Also at Science Daily and Science Alert.

Journal Reference:

Christopher R. Benson, Laura Kacenauskaite, Katherine L. VanDenburgh, et al. Plug-and-Play Optical Materials from Fluorescent Dyes and Macrocycles. Chem, 2020; 6 (8): 1978 DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2020.06.029


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 07 2020, @02:22PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2020, @02:22PM (#1032883) Journal

    That does sound like an interesting secondary application.

    (sarcasm)

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