Ortho-para iodine separation revisited

Abstract

An attempt was made to alter the ratio of ortho-iodine to para-iodine based on the techniques and results reported by Balykin et al. No enrichment of para-iodine was produced by pumping test cells containing either pure iodine vapour or a mixture of iodine and 2-hexene with an argon ion laser beam. However, differential collisional quenching of the fluorescence from different excited state vibrational levels was seen which mimicked the effect which we attempted to observe.