Warning: Hydrogen peroxide and oxalyl chloride are corrosive.
Wear gloves when handling them.
Oxalyl chloride is a toxic lachrymator, work outside or in a fume hood.
Greetings fellow nerds.
Most glow sticks are activated by liquid, usually hydrogen peroxide.
In this video we're going to make one activated by a vapor.
First we're going to start with our solvent.
Around 3mL of dimethyl phthalate.
Now we add in a fluorescent dye, i'm using 3mg of rubrene.
To give us a yellow color, you can also use 9,10-Bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene for a green color, or 9,10-diphenylanthracene for blue.
Once that's all shaken up, we then add in an equal volume of 30% hydrogen peroxide.
Now give that a shake to dissolve as much of the hydrogen peroxide as possible.
Now give a few minutes to settle.
The hydrogen peroxide layer will float on top of the denser dimethyl phthalate layer.
Now we pipette out the bottom dimethyl phthalate layer and apply it to a surface like this logo card.
Now for the key ingredient, oxalyl chloride.
This stuff is quite volatile and you'll need to work with it in a fume hood.
We're going to use the vapors from this oxalyl chloride to create chemiluminescence.
Now turn off the lights and hold the card near the cap of the bottle and open it.
Whoa! I just cracked open the bottle and the burst of oxalyl chloride vapor activated the glow.
Interestingly enough, the solution is on my gloves and i'm coloring everything i touch.
It's amazingly beautiful the waves of brightness that wash over the card since the cloud of vapor isn't uniform.
So what's happening.
When the oxalyl chloride vapor hits the solution it instantly reacts with the hydrogen peroxide to form 1,2-dioxetanedione.
This in turn reacts with the fluorescent dye to release light.
This reaction also works in liquid solution but i wanted to demonstrate the vapor reaction since it looks so much cooler.
Okay i've repeated the same experiment but this time i'm using 9,10-Bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene for a green color.
Let me set it up... Opening the cap...
And there we go.
That is awesome.
You might be wondering if this is used in glow sticks.
It's not because it only lasts for a few seconds before breaking down.
So oxalyl chloride is converted into longer lasting chemicals like TCPO which can last hours.
It's really unfortunate that oxalyl chloride is a toxic lachrymator.
Inhaling it is very dangerous.
I could see this effect being an awesome magic trick or even practical effect for videos.
You can pretend you're casting spells or something.
But as it is, this youtube video will probably be the closest most people will encounter this, safely anyway.
Oh cool, the solution actually soaked all the way through the card so it even works through the back.
Okay now i'm going to do another dye, 9,10-diphenylanthracene.
Simply sublime.
I'm sorry i don't have any red, these are all the colors i had on hand.
Oh by the way if you're interested in more videos on chemiluminescence, you can check out a few others that i've made in the video description.
Here are all the cards i've made and let's see if we can get them all to glow.
I'm trying to pour the vapor onto the cards.
Looks like i got some cross contamination since the chemicals smeared onto my glove, we have some green on the yellow card and few spots of yellow in the blue card.
Let me see if i can hit the air steam of my fume hood and get the vapors to cover all the cards.
And there you have it.
Vapor activated chemiluminescence, thanks for watching.
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