Help locating supplies, please...

[TinkreSmithe]

I am a hobby innovator. for my next project I need a bulb that emits ultra violet light in the range of 80-90 nm. can anyone tell me where I may find science supplies this technical? all I find is 280-400 nm. any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Klaynos]

What's your budget, what kind of spectrum are you after?

 

It's been a few years but I'm not sure this is trivial.

 

These sources are also potentially hazardous as the photons are quite high in energy.

[swansont]

I am a hobby innovator. for my next project I need a bulb that emits ultra violet light in the range of 80-90 nm. can anyone tell me where I may find science supplies this technical? all I find is 280-400 nm. any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I doubt you are going to find a commercial product built to do this. I don't think an incandescent source will emit anything close to that short of a wavelength, so it has to be a transition or some sort of frequency doubling (or some higher-order mixing process). The energy is right around the hydrogen ionization energy (~91 nm), so maybe a discharge tube will give you some small amount of those photons, if any recombination goes to the ground state instead of cascading. Or fully ionizing some other atom. EUV light at 13.5 nm has been made by turning a material into a plasma, so that's like a discharge tube on steroids

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Artificial_sources

 

You will likely run into issues with optics that allow transmission of the light. All of these cut off above 100 nm, and I think Sapphire does as well.

[StringJunky]

That falls in the extreme range 10nm -121nm) and is highly-ionising: read very dangerous without the right training and protective techniques. Ionising radition causes atoms to shed electrons, causing acute physical damage by killing cells and quite possibly cancer by altering the DNA. It is so energetic it gets used up ionising airmolecules in the upp

 

I doubt you are going to find a commercial product built to do this. I don't think an incandescent source will emit anything close to that short of a wavelength, so it has to be a transition or some sort of frequency doubling (or some higher-order mixing process). The energy is right around the hydrogen ionization energy (~91 nm), so maybe a discharge tube will give you some small amount of those photons, if any recombination goes to the ground state instead of cascading. Or fully ionizing some other atom. EUV light at 13.5 nm has been made by turning a material into a plasma, so that's like a discharge tube on steroids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Artificial_sources

You will likely run into issues with optics that allow transmission of the light. All of these cut off above 100 nm, and I think Sapphire does as well.

I found this:

 

 

Extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV or XUV) or high-energy ultraviolet radiation is electromagnetic radiation in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning wavelengths from 124 nm down to 10 nm, and therefore (by the Planck–Einstein equation) having photons with energies from 10 eV up to 124 eV (corresponding to 124 nm to 10 nm respectively). EUV is naturally generated by the solar corona and artificially by plasma and synchrotron light sources.

Its main uses are photoelectron spectroscopy, solar imaging, and lithography.

In air, EUV is the most highly absorbed component of the electromagnetic spectrum, requiring high vacuum for transmission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet

Would the fact it requires high vacuum put it out of the reach of amateur science as well as the safety aspect WRT to it being ionising radiation (10nm-124nm; extreme UV range)?

Edited March 11, 2017 by StringJunky

[John Cuthber]

The air will provide adequate screening from a source emitting 80 to 90nm UV from a UV safety point of view. The photolysis porducts of the air- ozone etc- would be a much bigger problem.

The big problem you face is finding anything transparent to make the "bulb" from.

You will be looking at things like differential pumping to get this to work.

This is an extraordinary technical challenge and it's just not in the reach of an amateur experimenter.

 

What are you actually trying to do?

[TinkreSmithe]

ok... I guess that train of thought is "from the ground up then". I will try other ideas...

my initial idea is to ionize a channel of air similar to a laser pointer to see how far I can project an arc. just your run of the mill death ray... =)

Honestly, I hope to catch a lightning bolt, slowly.

[swansont]

I found this:

 

 

Would the fact it requires high vacuum put it out of the reach of amateur science as well as the safety aspect WRT to it being ionising radiation (10nm-124nm; extreme UV range)?

Safety-wise you're probably fine if it's in a vacuum, since the chamber would provide shielding, as well as air on the outside.

[StringJunky]

Safety-wise you're probably fine if it's in a vacuum, since the chamber would provide shielding, as well as air on the outside.

Right.