Next week I’ll give a presentation on the Researchers Night at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary with the title: “Chemistry of light and the light of chemistry”.

During this presentation one of my favorite dyes will be also presented: Nile Red. However, just as usual, the 1000 USD/gram price was a bit over our budget, so I had to make it.

The raw product was contaminated with a few impurities, but a fast purification, by simple filtering the mixture through a short column helped a lot and ended up with a +95% pure product.

At first I concentrated the product from a dilute solution on the column as seen on the first pics. It’s interesting to see, that it has a different fluorescence in solution (faint orange fluorescent) and while it’s absorbed on the solid phase (pink, highly fluorescent).

After all the product was on the solid phase, I added another solvent and washed down the pure, HIGHLY FLUORESCENT product. Everything else, what was mainly products of side reactions, stuck at the top of the column as seen on the second pics and the gifs.

Also here is a video from the whole process in HD: https://youtu.be/W0Lk5jkd_B0

9:30 pm • 25 September 2016 • 2,711 notes • View comments