More EL chemistry: Luminescent ink  [Jeri Ellsworth] continues
her experiments with electroluminescence, this time she’s making
EL ink. The ink she’s looking for is Zinc Sulfate in a solution.
The process she chose is to re-dope some glow powder so that it
can be excited by the field around an AC current. In her video
(embedded after the break) she talks about the chemical
properties she’s after by detailing a cubic lattice of zinc and
sulfur atoms with an added copper atom (adding that atom is a
process called doping).  The quick and dirty synopsis of the
experiment starts by washing the glow powder with dish soap to
acquire zinc sulfide crystals. Then she combined copper sulfate
and zinc shavings from the inside of a modern penny to yield
copper metal and zinc sulfate suspended in solution. That was
mixed with the zinc sulfide from the glow powder washing and
doped with a little more copper sulfate. The excess liquid is
poured off, the test tube is capped with glass frit, and the
whole thing hits the kiln t