Vapor detection of polyaromatic compounds using laser-induced fluorescence

In this work, we present the fluorescence spectra of anthracene and pyrene vapors at different elevated temperatures (from 150 to 650 degreesC) excited with the 337 nm line of a nitrogen laser. We describe the high temperature effects on the resulting spectral properties including spectral intensity, spectral bandwidth and spectral shift. We found that the PAH fluorescence spectral bandwidths become very broad as the temperature increases. The broadening is mainly due to thermal vibrational sequence congestion. We also have found that the fluorescence intensity of pyrene vapor increases with increasing temperature, which results from the increase of the pyrene vapor absorption cross section at 337 nm.