UV light source

[planters]

I wanted to avoid purchasing a complete, commercial lab spectrometer for analyzing filters and dyes. I have a compact spectrograph and associated software that produces nice, stable spectra. I needed a broad-band light source with significant UV output because most of my work is with fluorescence/absorbance. I "borrowed" an inexpensive HID conversion kit from the car and tried it out. Nice! The emission is surprisingly stable, bright and obviously rugged. I went ahead and ordered a higher color temperature kit for the lab and we'll see how it works out.

[VDX]

... which wavelengths are good and with what dyes?

I have several 405nm-LED's with 9Watts optical power, that can be summed up to some hundred Watts pure 405nm-UV on a laser rod (or dye cavity) and an old TAE-N2-laser with 337nm and pulsing peak powers of some hundred Kilowatts - could this be a good start for experiments with dye-lasers or fluorescence driven amplifiers?

Viktor

[planters]

There are hundreds of dyes and you can check out a good list here:

http://www.chem.ucla.edu/~craigim/pd...laser-dyes.pdf

The coumarin 151 or 6H would absorb the 405 nm light very well and these are efficient dyes. The difficulty you might face is the low peak power of CW diode sources. However, there was an interesting paper written a few years ago that describes an interesting approach for diode pumping that you might be able to adapt.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a275114.pdf

I think your N2 laser would work with many dyes, however the low average powers make this less interesting (at least to me).

[Draco]

I have some experience with car HID systems one thing to note about the outer envelope is doped to fluoresce with the shorter wavelength UV,( I think i remember the outer quartz being doped with cerium) the higher color temp lamps also put out less total light 4200k having the highest output of about 3400 lumens and as the color temp goes up the efficiency falls off.
powerball is another lamp i like and use one for general light in my living room http://qa.sylvania.com/en-us/product...al-halide.aspx they are sadly more expensive, i lucked out at a scrap yard and got a few luminaries and as many lamps as i could stuff in my pockets to the scrap yard they where hazardous waste so they gave them to me and i think 10 bucks for the housings
they will also run on a car hid ballast of a similar wattage but will not hot re strike, the base arcs over , the outer shell on these is also doped with cerium.
The hid system you have? is it just a ballast and naked lamp? or did you get a housing with them? Hella makes some housings that have a free formed reffelctor in the back and a clear lens, they dont have a great uniform spot but they lack the cut off pattern that a lot of housings have that are needed for on road use unless you have a glare kit lol

[planters]

I ordered an Inovited 55W 12,000K set. I plan to place one in an aluminum "chimney" with a slit to allow a small amount of diffracted light to pass across the table to the fiber entrance. I can place ND , polarization or band pass filters in the expanding beam. I can mount a 5ml quartz cuvette right in front of the fiber as well. I can't get a differential measurement with only one path and have to exchange optics to compare optics as well as dyes. This is why stability is a big issue.

[Draco]

that's going to be very blue lol, one thing to be careful is when these types of lamps fail they can explode. The non oem kits can be picky on voltage too, they don't seem to be as flexible but at 13.8 volts they are stable. I am glad you found a cheap way to get the light you need, one think i was going to recommend was a UHP lamp from a dlp TV, they run at higher power and can be a pain to get the ballast to work, all of the ones i have seen run on 340+ volts, I did make a working fixture from the guts of a Samsung TV but dlp TVs are getting harder to find as scrap. The power supply just has a doubler for the line voltage and sends that to the ballast. the color temp is very nice and still has some UV that makes it past the glass shield