Mystery phosphor

Ross Fontenot (University of Alabama A&M) and Andy Hollerman (University of Louisiana Lafayette) dropped by a couple of weeks ago to leave a triboluminescent phosphor for us to test.  It is an organic phosphor but behaves more like an inorganic phosphor.  It is doped with europium, which is good, because we know a good bit about that particular activator.  Although I don't feel right about naming the material and providing our spectral data (after all, Andy and Ross have not finished publishing on the material), I can say that the europium peaks are slightly different than those found in most ceramic oxide host lattices. In the picture you can see the characteristic europium glow under a UV flashlight.

under room light

under UV light

We are particularly excited about the material because it could hold significant promise in our LumRad project.  LumRad is the name of the DTRA funded program to identify candidate phosphors for remote radiation detection.  Our hypothesis is that radiation induced damage will change the photoluminescent properties of phosphor materials that can be queried at any time after irradiation (i.e. we are not using the material as a scintillator).