We are changing the way glow powder is modified for safer use.
Silica encapsulation of SA phosphors works well, but leaves much to be desired. In theory a perfect industrial process would leave 100% of the target 50uM sized particles perfectly encapsulated with no imperfect crystal structures. However, perfection is never achievable.
Our powder is chemically washed and filtered to ensure the relatively large 50uM particle size or larger is shipped to customers. Both the pre-washed powder and the effluent from the wash process contain not only smaller encapsulated particle sizes, but also remnants, shards, and pieces of just silica crystal. Whether or not our wash process introduces more silica crystal remnants due to the mechanical action of washing breaking up imperfectly crystal structures encapsulating SA particles is still unquantified.
Rather than keep going down this path, with our vendor factory we explored phosphate passivation instead. There are some unique advantages this process has over silica encapsulation.
Chemically integrated barrier - A Sr-phosphate surface (conversion / passivation) suppresses Sr / Al leaching and Eu2 oxidation with minimal added partciel thickness, so less optical penalty and fewer brittle-shell issues. Science Direct
Body-familiar chemistry - Phosphate/strontium-phosphate surfaces are closer to bone-mineral chemistry than silica, which should be more biocompatible than silica, but this theory needs verification.
Damage tolerance - In theory these surfaces are less sensitive to nicks and impact damage than with a purely deposited silica (effectively glass) shell.
We are currently on backorder of some colors while we update our wash process to properly account for this new passivation technique.
Current orders waiting on backorder will be fulfilled with the new powder. If you received your powder already, it is the silica variant. We have the new powder in house and we’re updating our wash and validation processes before we ship.. should be shipping by next week.
Shoot, wish I saw this post earlier… will I get the new version too or the silica one? I placed an order around 13 hours ago and just went with aqua because it said green was out of stock. If green is available in a week(?) I would like to change it.
You know what, I’ll just stick with it and try it out first. I may just place another order if it goes well. Taxes and shipping sucks but that’s what you get living far away from everything cool haha!
I believe there were two silica left when i checked today. Green w/o silica will be in the new sleeves–the remaining green is in the old sleeves. But, to be confusing, aqua is still going out silica coated but it’s in the new sleeves. What’s up with the new sleeves?
Edited to add: if you don’t want the silica variant, feel free to say so in the order notes
are the updates to the powder live? or is it the silica variant still?