My 11 y.o. daughter is having a blast with these panels! I made her a little UV LED pen which draws very nicely on the panel. I also made a "camera" by taking a 12" cube cardboard box with a 4 inch diameter hole in one side, attaching a 4 inch diameter magnifying glass to the box and placing the photoluminescent panel inside. Cover the lens, take the box outside on a bright sunny day and uncover the lens for about 10 seconds, then run back into the house. It makes an amazingly good quality POSITIVE image (that is, bright is bright - unlike a NEGATIVE). After about 15 minutes, the image fades and another "picture" can be taken. These panels would be, in my opinion, a GREAT present to buy a 5 to 15 year old kid as a stocking stuffer. Buy more than one, so one panel can "fade" while the other is being used.

Do You have any plans to get other colors? That way I can make Pac-man (out of highly reflective yellow) and the ghosts. or red so that I can cut a glowing Sparkfun logo?

Question. I sometimes play disc golf at night and have a need to keep score. I was thinking of a cool way to have glow scorecards. Considering I do this often enough that the price per sheet would be a little excessive I was wondering this. What happens to the photoluminescent property if I were to laminate them using heat? Would the heat affect it or lack of air? Would this prolong the product ability?

Having had a few of these around for the past year i have to say that these are very good. normally photoluminescent panels tend to lose their ability, eventually losing light within a minute.

These however... even now if i wake up in the middle of the night i still see them clearly. Wether using it as part of a bigger project, or just to make your own glow in the dark stickers, these panels are frikkin awesome!

Technosource USA has interesting "Glow Crazy" kits. I got one at Toys-R-Us.
http://www.technosourcehk.com/pr_glow.php The Distance Doodler (UPC 8-01561 01054-1) has two 11.5" x 15.5" pieces of what looks like this type of paper. It unfortunately stays somewhat curled from in the box. The best part is a handheld 'pen' which contains a Blue/UV LED as well as a Blue/UV laser. The LED and Laser both have some visible blue light, but also excite fluorescent materials well. The difference in reflected brightness between various "white" papers and plastics it interesting since some have fluorescent whitener that is clearly excited. The Laser has a spot about an inch diameter at 25 feet (3.3 mrad, or 1.9 deg divergence). This is about 2-3 times that of a good HeNe, and ok for drawing at 5-10 feet. The only info included about the light is that it is a Class I laser (LED). I couldn't find any CDRH Accession number. Not trying to divert sales, but FYI: Amazon shows two versions (Jan-4 2014). The one I have is $15.15 on Amazon ASIN: B00AAJ6CO4. I don't know the difference between this and the other one $14.50. One Amazon review says sheets are also available from stuffedanimals dot com and search for "glow crazy bonus pack". Looks like five smaller sheets for $14.95. Regards, Steve

UV LEDs work well to charge these panels, as does sunlight, and florescent light. I use similar material which comes in tape form to mark items which I need to keep track of in the dark for astronomy, I.E. tripod legs, observing chair, etc. This helps to prevent tripping over them in the dark.

If you put a strip of it around the handle of a flashlight you will be able to find it better in the dark while camping or during a power failure.

Of course after being within 5m of these for more than 5 seconds, you too will glow in the dark! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUteUH7mz0A

Any chance you can try discharging a lit panel via IR light? I've had a project in mind that needs to be able to selectively erase as well and the paints I've tested so far have not worked; my understanding is only some of the chemicals used to create glow-in-the-dark paints can be de-illuminated with IR light.

A 5mW, 405nm laser pointer should draw on these things like a pen. It'll make just where the laser shines on glow at full brightness immediately. I've played around with that with other photoluminescent objects.

I could have used a few of these a couple months ago! Fire Dept came through and said we didn't have "Exit" signs above a couple of our warehouse doors. Paid $75 each from McMaster... McMaster Carr Exit Signs

The overall thickness is .02". The peel-off backing is .005" of that.

These use Europium as the emissive element (per MSDS) and will glow a long time. The side-effect is they take a little too long to charge for a good "flash wall". Good news is that the kind of fast-charge/fast-fade characteristic best for that is the cheap stuff, such as Benjamin Moore Glow-in-the-Dark latex, works fine with a UV flash.

what's the thickness of the sheets?

Is this the cool stuff that children's museums will put in a semi-dark room with a button-triggered, camera flash to capture freeze-frame shadows? Usually the flash triggers a couple seconds after the button press to allow for posing.

These are great! Can you provide any real data on how long they remain bright for after being "charged" up? I can imagine some sparkfun module hooked up to measure the illumination and graphing it out as it fades. Perhaps show a secondary graph of an EL panel being dimmed for comparison? Cool nonetheless. Who found this product?

PVC. Drat. That means no laser cutting.