Patent ID: 7652078

Claim:
A method of fabricating high concentrations of dyes in polymeric hosts comprising the steps of: a. selecting a first solvent for both a dye and a polymer; b. selecting a second solvent that is miscible with the first solvent and in which the dye and the polymer have limited solubility in the second solvent; c. creating a resultant solution by co-dissolving the dye and the polymer in the first solvent; d. adding the resultant solution to the second solvent to create a polymer/dye co-precipitate and a residual solution; e. separating the polymer/dye co-precipitate from the residual solution; f. drying the polymer/dye co-precipitate to remove solvent residue; g. melting the dried, polymer/dye co-precipitate within a polymer compounder to create a solid solution; and h. converting the solid solution into a physical form; and wherein the step of melting is monitored spectroscopically, using one of the following techniques: a. ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy; b. infrared absorption spectroscopy c. nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; d. fluorescence spectroscopy; and e. ESR spectroscopy.