We have a variety of UV inks.  

• Excitation Wavelength
• Longwave
• Shortwave
• Sunlight Stable: Inorganic and heat resistant
• Soluble:  Organic with some have solubility in certain solvents
• Emission Color: red, green, blue, white, yellow, pink, aqua
• Bi-Color Inks that fluoresce one color under shortwave light and another under longwave light

Good rules of thumb are that

Sunlight stable inorganic phosphor based inks:

• Are dispersions or suspension
• Have excellent sunlight stability
• Are not as bright as organics
• Are more expensive
• Appear more like talcum powder and so may be visible on glossy surfaces

Organic based inks:

• May or may not have solubility in certain solvents
• Will probably fade in direct sunlight after about 1 week, but will last indefinitely in darkness
• Are probably brighter than inorganic phosphors
• Usually cost less
• Can have much better invisibility

We can custom make ink dispersions or suspensions out of almost any of our phosphors or pigments using either a water based acrylic clear coat or solvent based clear coat.  You can use our paint ball valve type refillable pens with any of our inks.

Phosphors, dyes and inks all have specific excitation and emission curves.  Sometimes the curves can be quite specific and other times quite broad.  Some longwave materials may fluoresce strongly at 365nm but not much at 400nm, so make sure that your excitation sources matches the material that you are using.  Customers should also be aware the UV LED flashlights are often miss-rated to have a lower peak wavelength than their actual wavelength.  This is quite common with Chinese lights because the shorter wavelength LED's are much more expensive than the longer ones.  For example, even the a seller might think they have a 365nm UV LED light, when we measure the light with our spectrometer, we find that it is actually a 390nm UV LED light.

To jump to the Ink, Dyes, Phosphors and Pigments section of our online store, you can click here.