Applications

Ethyl violet is a cationic triarylmethane dye that is the ethyl homolog of crystal violet. It is a general histological and pathological stain. Ethyl violet has been used to stain pancreatic tissue and elastin,¹ in the detection of gram negative bacteria,² and as a reagent for the extractive-spectrophotometric determination of anionic surfactants.³ Ethyl violet induces mitochondrial permeability.⁴ It has been used in the extraction and spectrophotometric determination of copper.⁵ Along with the anionic dye zincon, ethyl violet is used in counterion dye of proteins in SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.⁶