Way down upon the Swanee River

[planters]

Does anyone remember The Honeymooners routine where Norton was helping Ralph to prepare for a "name that tune" contest? Before each practice session Ed would warm up with "Way down upon the Swanee River" then launch into loads of difficult songs that Ralph would identify. Well, when the contest began the first tune Ralph was presented...yes,you guessed it and he had no idea!

I have been working with laser solvents for quite a while including some pretty expensive, highly purified spectroscopic grades. I have also tried some that are expensive to dispose of because they are rather toxic. This is based on rather wide range of published results for the xanthenes, the coumarins and the phenyl derivatives. Each researcher will use a particular solvent and then go on to study some other aspect of the laser design and it is hard to deconvolve the solvent effect. The solution is to test a lot of alternatives.

Well. during this time I have always depended on 91% isopropyl alcohol FROM WALMART as the workhorse clean up solvent for lab ware and table tops etc before moving to purer liquids for final cleaning and flushing or for hosting a dye in the laser. Well...right again! I thought to try this "junk" just to see how badly it would perform. I'm not kidding here, this stuff is wonderful. It is cheap. It's mid range polarity works with polar and non-polar dyes. The fluorescence output is, taking Rhodamine 590 as an example, 25% better than any combination of methanol, ethanol water, ethylene glycol and Ammonyx that I have tried. And, it's really cheap! There is no delivery charge if you go into the store and so my local Walmart thinks I'm a little touched. I'm buying A LOT.

[catalanjo]

Brilliant !
Have you thought of trying Jack Daniels ....bit expensive but you never know you might even end up with a curved beam!
Cheers

[planters]

Have you thought of trying Jack Daniels

It just doesn't last.

[swamidog]

the swami river??

[planters]

the swami river??

See what I mean?

[danielbriggs]

Just to check: you're seriously saying 91% IPA is better than meth/eth?
Have you a spectrometer? How does IPA shift the emission relative to the same concentration in Methanol?

[planters]

Yes, to both. The RG590 shift blue shift is approx 10 nm with isopropyl vs 50:50 MeOH: H2O. The coumarins (480,490,500,504) shift 15nm. This is in the spectrometer. The CL wavelength in the laser will be modified by the optics. Here, I only measured the energy.

[planters]

Oh, something I neglected to add. The ammonyx is not very useful in the other alcohol systems, but does add a few percent in the energy output of the isopropyl system.

[NobleGas]

MeOH is presumably CH3OH? Me isn't a recognised chemical notation!

[mixedgas]

MeOH and EtOH are widely used in the states in the last few years.

STEVE