Pretty PAH crystal pictures! July 8, 2009
Posted by fetzthechemist in Uncategorized.trackback
I just found a source of a few large PAHs that has pretty pictures of vacuum sublimed samples (the company makes these types of apparati, for you on the crystal making business).
http://www.kentax.de/Molecule-index.html
These are the beautiful PAHs terrylene (tribenzo[de,kl,rst]pentaphene) and dicoronylene.
Fetzthechemist's Weblog 
SHINY!!!
Thanks for sharing the site. Mmm…eye candy.
Having done vacuum sublimations for some of these, I know the colors. These crystals are pretty reflective, so the pictures look either pale or not in the real colors. That’s is why some of the dicoronylene needles look whitish or yellw. They are all really that orangy red. Bisanthene in a deep blue and one of them is a purply color (I know the structure is two perylenes fused at the bcd positions but the site uses Clar’s arcane nomenclature).
I wish I had been involved in these pictures. Under UV light and in the dark, these all phosphoresce in really intense colors. Bright lemony yellows, oranges, reds, and so on. I have one such pair of pics of a PAH-rich goo, black globs that are intensely blue under UV….fluorescence there of the amorphous mixture. PAH crystals actually go into the triplet state, so it is phosphorescence.