In an effort to better understand how materials absorb light (information which is
extremely useful for applications such as photovoltaic substrate design), this thesis
project focuses on designing and building an instrument to measure how substrates
coated with certain materials emit light. The substrates studied are to be coated with a
fluorescent thin film of Alq3 to provide light emission from the material surface. One
non-planar substrate of particular interest is the cornea of a blow-fly, which is expected to
have emission over a wide angular range. The components of the optical instrument
consist of a femtowatt photodetector, two conjoined rotating stages to allow for light
measurements as a function of solid angle, optical filters, and a UV LED to excite the
fluorescent material.
