Okay, on my recent bus trip adventure a guy made the claim that the liquid inside Cyalume lightsticks (or similar glow sticks) was made from dish soap. I find this a little hard to believe, considering some of the other things the guy said, so is it? And if not, what’s the formula?
Well, I searched, but no soap.
In addition to the chemicals mentioned by Q.E.D., there is also the solvent system, a weak catalytic base and any number of fluorophors - none of these is soap.
The green cyalume sticks use 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene as the fluorophors. Here’s a list of the dyes they use for other colors. None of them look very soapy.
I looked up the 9,10-Bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene on Fisher Scientific’s web site – $104 for 500 mg. Youch. Guess that I’m not going to be making any this Halloween.
9,10-Diphenylanthracene is a lot cheaper; 5 g for ~$95.