We use this at work to bond power MOSFETs to copper bus bars. The trick is that the surfaces you want to bond should be tin-plated. You don't need solder film, and the joints are incredibly strong. I have tried breaking them apart by hand and cannot.
This is actually really useful information! I am building a TMS unit, and want to minimize losses/heating at the connections. Do you just use bath electroplating? Do you use/make those 'electropens' (not sure what the proper name is, I've only used them for jewelry) that have a tip soaked In solution, current source and an alligator clip? (I can't afford to put a $1000 transistor in a bath and ruin it if it's not safe)
@@sophiophileI would be very curious if you found a simple way to electroplate things with tin, as it's a very tricky metal to do so since it always tends to form sharp branches instead of a thin layer. The only ways I know of that don't require melting the tin either involve alloys with zinc or hydrofluoric acid baths, obviously something you'd want to avoid.
@@flomojo2u I don't have personal experience with this, and am looking for guidance from the OP (who does). I think that tin whiskering during plating might not be an issue, if you are going to follow it up with soldering via the method in the video, since all those whiskers would probably be melted down and form a well-bonded surface? That's just a guess though. Let's wait for the OP!
@@sophiophile I'm also interested in what the OP has to say as well. Regarding whiskers, I wonder if the trick to texture to surface so you get a dense carpet of very fine whiskers and then mechanically press that flat?
I wonder if you could make a version of that by electroplating on the thin alternating layers by alternating the material between two different electrolysis containers.
maybe, but you would have to somehow stop oxidisation on the way. The way I have seen this being made is by cyclic evaporation of the two metals in a vacuum chamber, balanced with cooling it with ballast.
Certainly if there is a way of plating thin aluminium layers by electroplating it sounds possible. I wonder if there are any other similar arrangements of metals that might show this behaviour.
There appears to be an element of unbalanced energies in the foil and could be dark matter related. You will see the same effect using light. We found dark matter exactly as CERN now agrees...it is literally 1/2 of light. This vid explains and shows dark matter. th-cam.com/video/WtdfBIuf7BM/w-d-xo.html
@@oliverer3 Valid Point Though, USCSB had a video specifically on how scale can impact the safety of a reaction. Definitely would need to consult experts and maybe even do it in a special location!
It's a narrow range of solder thicknesses that this can work in. Al embrittles tin joints so you can't make the solder too thin either. If the surface isn't wetting then you may need to flux to remove the oxidation barrier. That and sometimes the solder you are using just doesn't form the right intermetallic with the surface finish. You probably need to get application engineer support from Indium Corp directly to get this to work, which explains why nanofoil hasn't really taken off despite being around at least 10+ years.
Hello Sir, I really enjoy your videos. The material you mention sounds like it is similar to laser phenomena in that the energy state is lower than the “inverted” populated state. All It takes is something to start the cascade of energy flowing to a lower level. I nice heard of a “gravitational laser” that worked like dominoes falling. (Although it was not stimulated emission of light.) This material does release energy-I wonder if it is at the same wavelength??? Hmmm?
I look forward to posts from this channel more than any others by a long shot, with few exceptions outside of Tech Ingredients and a few machining channels I watch.
This is sick! I’d love to see you try making some in your sputtering chamber. I bet if you had one sputter gun for each metal you could just rotate a stage between them at a prescribed time interval and somewhat automate the production
@@theafro Inclined to agree, to reach sputtering level energy you have active plasma in the chamber. May not *always* trigger if the proper conditions were met, but I think it's important to expect it in this instance. Nice catch!(was considering trying some myself and this has likely just saved me some headache.)
I bet you could make it with a sheet metal roller. Just start with the aluminum layer 33% thicker than the nickel and just rol it out, cut it and stack it and then roll it out. Repeat until you have the desired number of layers and then roll it out until you have it thin enough
the best part of this channel is that everything here is INDUCTRIAL level and he presents like a secondary school level of difficulty level .............. excellent content
Ben, I am very local to you and am a goldsmith. I've got many tools in my workshop that I feel would be very useful to many of your projects. Some of these tools are a rolling mill (would have been useful in today's video) and a powerful ND-YAG 80-joule laser welder that is normally used to weld micro scale for repairing things that are heat sensitive and casting equipment for lost wax casting. My friend recently contacted you regarding some holographic and interferometry equipment I wanted to donate to you, however, you simply don't have space for it. I get it, I have a fairly large workshop, and still, I have run out of space. my shop is in Albany CA, I offer you free use of it and any tools I own, and do feel I can occasionally be of great help to some of your projects. bye bye and maybe you will read this :)
I get hyped every time you post a piece of content Ben. If memory serves you’re still working at verily? I can’t imagine trying to balance my brain between the two. Kudos and keep doing what you’re doing my guy 🤛
You are a truly remarkable scientist. I work in a scientific enviroment for 8 years now and even in face of all the theoretical competence only a few are able to demonstrate and explain their work in a language that is very understandable and informative. This extra effort makes a good scientist in my book. 👍
I always enjoy your subjects and videos. I'm just an ol Tennessee mountain hilbilly, but I always learn a new thing or two each time you upload. Thank you.
Indium corp. has a half-decent YT-channel too, where they showcase all these fancy nanolayer-materials. Another "hidden gem" is nickel-plated (electroformed) bellows made by one "Servometer" co. They use a sacrificial aluminium (turned) mandrel, deposit nickel on it, then melt away the core. Amazing properties in the thin and isotropic nickel-layer deposited thusly ..
It would be impossible to build and handle such a PCB outside of a lab, I think. Nanofoil is very touchy stuff. It is sensitive to ESD and mechanical shock.
Holy crap that's incredible! how is it made? i had no idea something like that existed. But now i've seen it in action, it feels like something super obvious that i should have known. Amazing stuff. Are there special procedures to cut it? i'd imagine you wouldn't want the roll/sheet to go off before you could use it.
I think it's made by sputtering Al and Ni alternately, but I'm not sure if the process is reel-to-reel or batch -- either way very expensive! One patent claimed it can be made by physically rolling out the metal and folding it repeatedly. The tech sheet claims it can be cut with a laser with different parameters since a laser is also recommended for initiation!
It is made by evaporation of metals in a vacuum chamber, onto a sacrificial substrate. No need for a sputtering gun, but it needs a very good vacuum. In any case, it is still very expensive. Moreover, low demand means that it is effectively hand-made (that is, no mass production) for each tiny batch.
5:34 for something as large as that (high thermal mass) preheating all parts to say 100C or 120C will help. As an experienced "big" PCB reworker, the bond had all the visuals of a way-too-cold joint. On smaller parts (1-2% of the mass you used ) it would have probably been a much better bond. Heck even a domestic hairdyer may help (I use one as a preheater to do PCB work on large PCBs and large components with lead-free solder such as power transformers, large RF screens and stripline filters)
The magic of nanofoil, when done properly, is that it can effectively bond large thermal masses at room temperature, without flux or special atmosphere. This makes it possible for an engineering shop, rather than an EMS or rework shop, to do the work.
I believe there is an explosive smokeless delay fuse that works in a similar fashion. I know it uses a wire passed through a dissimilar metal tube. One of the metals is Palladium the other is aluminium or a silver copper mix. When heated at one end,the metals, melt, forming an aloy, releasing considerable amounts of heat. The advantage is ignition without the release of any smoke or gas. I think it is sold under the trade name pyrofuze.
Try initiating the reaction by squeezing it real hard and then adding a bit more by striking it with a small hammer. This might enable it to initiate in multiple points at once, creating an even faster heat pulse.
Thank you! This is incredibly useful. I didn't know of such material. This would definitely be useful for transducer/signal source mounts without destroying parts with extended heat.
Hmm, love stuff like this, always gets me thinking. If its just heat needed, will the reaction start with a hard hit from a ball peen hammer? or does that mess with the material layers before they have a chance to start reacting?
You should be able to use this to solder a heatsink to a CPU to maximize thermal coupling, improving the thermal dissipation, thus allowing one to overclock for higher performance.
definitely, if there is no oxide (or any other compound for that matter) layer. Many materials do that already, it's not like the concept is new. For example mercury and sodium form an alloy (amalgam) and release a lot of energy. Most others release much less though.
I discovered something similar. I own a heat treating company any while processing Titanimum I noticed a weird in phenomenon. I heated the Titanimum to about 1600° and water quenched. Then back home to the oven and then as it was heating all the sudden a real bright spot started at an edge that was brighter then the black body color of the oven. This bright spot traveled through the entire disk of Titanimum quickly. Now the entire dial was glowing much brighter then the actual inside of the oven. This did not happen the first time I heated it. Don’t know what caused it but it was VERY noticeable and maybe had to do with the crystal structure changing. It was grade 2 Titanimum disks that where about .02” thick.
the biggest detriment to soldering is surface oxidation, also in preparing your thin piece of solder if you didn't use enough flux or kept it molten to long it may have become oxidized
A similar alloy reaction was used to make smokeless delay fuses for explosives. The fuses were made from a pair of thin concentric wires made of two different metals. When ignited, the two metals combined to form an alloy that liberated considerable heat in the process. As no smoke, or gas, is generated in the reaction, the fuse can be completely enclosed, it also does not require oxygen.
that's awesome it kind of works the in the same manner as a stud welder, an instant burst of heat that does not really heat the bulk material much at all.
Hi Applied Science, Nice video again. The phenomenon is known in the explosive and propellant field as two fine ribbons of metal that are intricated or twisted and that could be ignitated by a spark or heat by generating high luminosity, fusion and alloying of the two metals with help of atomic mixing and entropic desorder (chaos). It is thus a purely entropic process and doesn't involve oxido-reduction or chemical reaction. The name refers to into English (or into French) to "coruscative alloy mix" (sometimes written as corruscative in old texts) (aliage coruscatif) It doesn't per se require to be thin (submicronic or nano) but it speeds things up because of the intimacy of the solid reactants... just like grinding finer oxidiser and reducers into a pyrotechnic mix will speed up the burning rate to several MACHs instead of slow burning. It is written in one of my Explosives 4th Edition book from Rudolf Meyer to be able to acheive a burning rate of a few meters/s and some mixes up to a few 100 meters propagation rate (usually lower than MACH 1 - thus a bit like a deflagrating material - low burning explosive material - often below or much below sound spead in air and especially into the material - speed of sound in hard metals can be up to 1-6 km/s) what contrast a lot with usual detonating materials (detonating at 3.000 m/s (about MACH 10) up to 10.000m/s (about MACH 28 yes)) I hope this will help you a bit. PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum) - (and A.O.L. (alt. engr. chemistry, alt. engr. explosives, rec. sci. pyrotechnics, ...))
Just after this material was invented, and I would swear they were using aluminum-titanium layers at that time, I saw a company chemist demonstrated it at a chemical industry convention. Item 1, he had brought the material to the convention in his personal luggage on an airplane (gulp). And 2, a potential app was using it to glue ceramic armor to armor plate for tanks. Funny stuff.
I don't see the problem with bringing this on a plane. It isn't going to self initiate. Despite it being "hot" and "reacting fast", it is signifigantly less dangerous to the plane than plenty of other benign stuff we carry all the time.
A significant charge stored in this capacitor mug, ~3.5 gigajoules (821 mega calories). Now I see the source of the energy for all this magnificent things you are doing ..
At 2:11, you can see that the reaction starts at one electrode. This reminds me of welding talk, where the polarity of the electrode is said to increase or decrease the "heat" in the weld.
in the soldering experiment, the foil ends up as part of the joint. Solder does not stick to aluminum. At 6:01 you can see the solder sticking to the brass but not where the square piece of foil was sitting. So I'm not sure how this would be done in a commercial application keeping the foil from contaminating the joint.
Seems like this would make an excellent ignition source for rocketry. I'm specifically thinking of so-called "solid-state rockets" where the thrust comes from propellent stored in wells on the surface of a block. Each well is able to be individually triggered by controlling hardware. They're intended for use in satellite station-keeping in situations where other methods aren't viable due to mission length or other factors.
2:10 Hi Ben. In the slow motion shots, we can clearly see the reaction front, as you described in you video. The front begins always only from one of the electrodes. Does it begin from the negative electrode? If yes, is it because electrons "land" there first? If we assume that the positive and negative electrodes have the same contact area, shouldn't the "local" current flow be the same, so the same resistance and hence the same temperature rise? What will happen if you place multiple negative electrodes (or whichever is first) to spread the current flow at the contact points? Will we observe multiple reaction fronts or the reaction will start from the other electode? What if you increase both the negative and positive contact areas, like across opposite edges of the square? Is there going to be a front again or the metal will combust "instantly" all over its surface? Last question: The material must have a minimum temperature at which the reaction begins. Can you heat the whole piece gradually to that point and see if it reacts instantly?
(Made some major edits, to clarify about using thicker metal sheet for bonding before rolling, atmospheric control, etc. Think making this stuff by adapting solid-state bonded mokume gane techniques if you want the tldr) You might be able to make this stuff using a electric kiln (w/ atmospheric control) + enough force clamping many layers of thicker metal together (they would need to be extremely clean) to solid state fuse a large billet, and then run it through a rolling mill til you reach the desired inter-layer thickness. You can make basic modifications to a standard kiln to achieve atmospheric control and keep oxygen out. I run a kiln with pure hydrogen atmosphere (generated from a PEM electrolyzer), and a bubbler for flashback protection for the 'exhaust' (when I need a reducing atmosphere)- although something like argon is probably more sensible/safer for a use case like this. Regardless, I've never experienced any flashback/combustion after a few minutes purge.
@@Prophes0r If you look up modern techniques for solid-state fusion of the bullet for mokume gane, you simply use atmospheric control inside the kiln. It is super simple to modify a standard kiln to run gas through and keep oxygen out. I run my kiln (when heat treating gemstones that need a reducing atmosphere) with pure hydrogen and have never experienced any flashback from the hydrogen combusting (although I do use a bubbler for flashback protection where the most of the gas leaves). I've also run it (when I need an oxidizing atmospherel with oxygen from a repurposed medical O2 concentrator, and an O2/O3 mix by putting an ozone generator in tandem with the O2 concentrator- although I'm not sure if the ozone survives to do anything once the kiln temp is high enough.
@@sophiophile I'm not saying you can't get a good environment to keep oxidation from happening. I'm asking how you would get the thin layers of Aluminum into the sandwich without it oxidising. Like, before you get the kiln and clamp involved. Where does the thin, Oxygen-free Aluminum feedstock come from? And if you can get Oxygen-free feedstock, does your feedstock production process benefit from adding the kiln step rather than making it directly bonded to the Nickel layer? That's why I keep saying it should just be alternating plating steps for simplicity and control. Also, remember that this is a heat initiated process. These metals WANT to react. They don't need anything external to do so other than energy/heat. If you give them enough heat to bond the layers in a kiln, you are giving them enough heat to initiate a reaction and alloy.
@@Prophes0r Plating may very well work too (although the time and cost would be extremely high), but I don't think the concerns you are mentioning would interfere with the process I suggested. There are very common pretreatments (nitric acid bath for one) that remove the oxide layer from aluminum. I have never bonded aluminum this way, however. I have done it with other metals that form oxide skins, and successfully bonded layers while removing oxide using only abrasive processes. Also, you don't have to worry about setting off the material because you solid state bond many layers of *thicker metal*, and then using a rolling mill to reduce the thickness of the fused billet. (The traditional way is roll into half thickness, cut it in half and stack them, roll again, repeat over and over until you achieve the per-layer thickness you want). You never expose metal that is thin enough to ignite to the heat of the kiln. I guess the only way to know for sure would be to try!
Maybe add some flux, zinc chloride, in small amounts. Can be water soluble flux or oil based flux which contains Oleic Acid. The flux cleans or preps the metal and acts like a carrier of the solder. Wherever the flux is applied, the solder will follow.
This sure seems strange! 1) Soldering without flux? Of course the solder didn't want to wet the surface? They actually do this without any kind of flux? Maybe if you gold plated both surfaces first to prevent oxidization? 2) What happens to the reactive metal in the joint? I thought nickel did not dissolve into tin very well? Or is this material so thin that it is able to entirely dissolve?
Indium corporation claims the process works without flux, but one detail I may have missed is that the substrates should be tin plated. One of the other commenters said the process works without solder if the tin thickness is correct. The NiAl compound stays in the joint. It's not the strongest material, but this type of bonding is usually done for thermal transfer and light mechanical loads. Another neat benefit is that it can bond materials with dissimilar thermal expansion coefficients since the bulk of the material never heats up during soldering.
Flux! Joins aren't wetting because the solder isn't getting the components hot enough. Solder is oxidizing before it sticks to the bronze, but sicking perfectly to the nickel-aluminum. if you can't flux the joint, eliminate the oxygen in a vaccuum chamber, then ensure the joint has solder continuously between components.
It might be that oxidation is the issue, i have used boric acid dissolved in alcohol as a flux before, it leaves a very thin film when the ethanol flashes off.
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We use this at work to bond power MOSFETs to copper bus bars. The trick is that the surfaces you want to bond should be tin-plated. You don't need solder film, and the joints are incredibly strong. I have tried breaking them apart by hand and cannot.
This is actually really useful information! I am building a TMS unit, and want to minimize losses/heating at the connections.
Do you just use bath electroplating? Do you use/make those 'electropens' (not sure what the proper name is, I've only used them for jewelry) that have a tip soaked In solution, current source and an alligator clip? (I can't afford to put a $1000 transistor in a bath and ruin it if it's not safe)
@@sophiophileI would be very curious if you found a simple way to electroplate things with tin, as it's a very tricky metal to do so since it always tends to form sharp branches instead of a thin layer. The only ways I know of that don't require melting the tin either involve alloys with zinc or hydrofluoric acid baths, obviously something you'd want to avoid.
@@flomojo2u I don't have personal experience with this, and am looking for guidance from the OP (who does). I think that tin whiskering during plating might not be an issue, if you are going to follow it up with soldering via the method in the video, since all those whiskers would probably be melted down and form a well-bonded surface?
That's just a guess though. Let's wait for the OP!
@@sophiophile I'm also interested in what the OP has to say as well. Regarding whiskers, I wonder if the trick to texture to surface so you get a dense carpet of very fine whiskers and then mechanically press that flat?
How dangerous is this stuff to store and handle? Seems like you'd want to have only small quantities in any given space
I have talked to the person that makes these in the UK. They make it by metal evaporation in a vacuum chamber. It's pretty expensive stuff.
Can u share please on this evaporator technique, or uk person details
I wonder if you could make a version of that by electroplating on the thin alternating layers by alternating the material between two different electrolysis containers.
maybe, but you would have to somehow stop oxidisation on the way.
The way I have seen this being made is by cyclic evaporation of the two metals in a vacuum chamber, balanced with cooling it with ballast.
Certainly if there is a way of plating thin aluminium layers by electroplating it sounds possible. I wonder if there are any other similar arrangements of metals that might show this behaviour.
🤔 Electro Vapor Deposition, maybe?
(or whatever it's called; how metal layers get deposited to plastic, glass, etc, inside a vacuum chamber)
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLE Physical Vapor Deposition. The metal or whatever is evaporated in a vacuum and condenses on the substrate.
@@randacnam7321 That. Yes. Thank you!
What an interesting material. That stuff really shows how reactive some metals are when combined. Would love to see some more experiments with it!
@@sometimesleela5947 Solves our problem of how to bond MOSFETs directly to copper bus bars.
Fascinating!
There appears to be an element of unbalanced energies in the foil and could be dark matter related. You will see the same effect using light. We found dark matter exactly as CERN now agrees...it is literally 1/2 of light. This vid explains and shows dark matter. th-cam.com/video/WtdfBIuf7BM/w-d-xo.html
I've seen a lot of slow-motion footage before and I've never seen anything as cool as 0:30
Seeing a HUGE sheet of this, or roll that is unrolled, would make for an AMAZING episode on one of those Slow Motion Channels!
Sounds scary, this seems close to an explosive so handling a large sheet does not seem fun
@@oliverer3 You are wrong. Explosions are fun.
@@oliverer3 Valid Point Though, USCSB had a video specifically on how scale can impact the safety of a reaction.
Definitely would need to consult experts and maybe even do it in a special location!
*Also it may end up being expensive as hell*
You can order letter-paper sized sheets. The idea being that you would die-cut the shapes you need. So the possibility is there.
It's a narrow range of solder thicknesses that this can work in. Al embrittles tin joints so you can't make the solder too thin either. If the surface isn't wetting then you may need to flux to remove the oxidation barrier. That and sometimes the solder you are using just doesn't form the right intermetallic with the surface finish. You probably need to get application engineer support from Indium Corp directly to get this to work, which explains why nanofoil hasn't really taken off despite being around at least 10+ years.
Its the price that limits its adoption. Hard to compete with the cost of reflow or soldering iron.
Hello Sir, I really enjoy your videos. The material you mention sounds like it is similar to laser phenomena in that the energy state is lower than the “inverted” populated state. All It takes is something to start the cascade of energy flowing to a lower level. I nice heard of a “gravitational laser” that worked like dominoes falling. (Although it was not stimulated emission of light.) This material does release energy-I wonder if it is at the same wavelength??? Hmmm?
I look forward to posts from this channel more than any others by a long shot, with few exceptions outside of Tech Ingredients and a few machining channels I watch.
we're all watching the same stuff you know. one big audience all consuming the same maker/science channels 😅
This is sick! I’d love to see you try making some in your sputtering chamber. I bet if you had one sputter gun for each metal you could just rotate a stage between them at a prescribed time interval and somewhat automate the production
could also just set both of them going and start rotating the specimen very slowly, building up the layers in a helix.
you'd have to make the foil layers seperately, the chamber might be a bit too energetic for the complete composite to hang around for very long!
@@theafro Inclined to agree, to reach sputtering level energy you have active plasma in the chamber. May not *always* trigger if the proper conditions were met, but I think it's important to expect it in this instance. Nice catch!(was considering trying some myself and this has likely just saved me some headache.)
@@theafro oooo yea that’s a tricky one to get around
I bet you could make it with a sheet metal roller. Just start with the aluminum layer 33% thicker than the nickel and just rol it out, cut it and stack it and then roll it out. Repeat until you have the desired number of layers and then roll it out until you have it thin enough
I love the mug! That analogy works on so many levels.
the best part of this channel is that everything here is INDUCTRIAL level and he presents like a secondary school level of difficulty level .............. excellent content
Ben, I am very local to you and am a goldsmith. I've got many tools in my workshop that I feel would be very useful to many of your projects. Some of these tools are a rolling mill (would have been useful in today's video) and a powerful ND-YAG 80-joule laser welder that is normally used to weld micro scale for repairing things that are heat sensitive and casting equipment for lost wax casting. My friend recently contacted you regarding some holographic and interferometry equipment I wanted to donate to you, however, you simply don't have space for it. I get it, I have a fairly large workshop, and still, I have run out of space. my shop is in Albany CA, I offer you free use of it and any tools I own, and do feel I can occasionally be of great help to some of your projects. bye bye and maybe you will read this :)
I wonder if ESD static discharge is enough to set it off ... would be interesting to see a video where you tried
Yes, it is! I have done it. Impact from sharp objects also works, but not reliably.
What about high frequency vibration?@@jamgreg
I get hyped every time you post a piece of content Ben. If memory serves you’re still working at verily? I can’t imagine trying to balance my brain between the two. Kudos and keep doing what you’re doing my guy 🤛
Awesome! I don't recall ever seeing this material or even property before. Very awesome!
Your process for making flat solider was on point. Thought it was a brilliant cheap solution.
Couldn't be any simpler could it? That's amazing. Never heard of this before.
Beautiful high speed footage
Nity as always ! Yes, use it in a project soon.
Your videos almost always introduce me ro something ive never heard of.
Thanks for showing off this niche soldering tech, good to have in the bag of tricks.
Ben + flammable solid = interesting video! That's a really unique way to provide the heat source for soldering.
You are a truly remarkable scientist. I work in a scientific enviroment for 8 years now and even in face of all the theoretical competence only a few are able to demonstrate and explain their work in a language that is very understandable and informative. This extra effort makes a good scientist in my book. 👍
I never regret the patreon deduction as it means I get to see another excellent video by you.
soldering a joint that big would be impossible with an iron so the reactive foil is actually super impressive it made it stick at all
I always enjoy your subjects and videos. I'm just an ol Tennessee mountain hilbilly, but I always learn a new thing or two each time you upload. Thank you.
Never knew something like that even existed!!!
You have the most interesting experiments.
We need more science guys like you. Bravo!
Indium corp. has a half-decent YT-channel too, where they showcase all these fancy nanolayer-materials.
Another "hidden gem" is nickel-plated (electroformed) bellows made by one "Servometer" co. They use a sacrificial aluminium (turned) mandrel, deposit nickel on it, then melt away the core. Amazing properties in the thin and isotropic nickel-layer deposited thusly ..
As a ground plane in PCBs, this'd be neat for self-destructing electronics, although soldering it up without setting it off would be tricky.
It would be impossible to build and handle such a PCB outside of a lab, I think. Nanofoil is very touchy stuff. It is sensitive to ESD and mechanical shock.
Alright that might be one of the coolest things ever filmed on a kronos. Thanks for sharing!
Holy crap that's incredible! how is it made? i had no idea something like that existed. But now i've seen it in action, it feels like something super obvious that i should have known. Amazing stuff.
Are there special procedures to cut it? i'd imagine you wouldn't want the roll/sheet to go off before you could use it.
I think it's made by sputtering Al and Ni alternately, but I'm not sure if the process is reel-to-reel or batch -- either way very expensive! One patent claimed it can be made by physically rolling out the metal and folding it repeatedly. The tech sheet claims it can be cut with a laser with different parameters since a laser is also recommended for initiation!
It is made by evaporation of metals in a vacuum chamber, onto a sacrificial substrate. No need for a sputtering gun, but it needs a very good vacuum. In any case, it is still very expensive. Moreover, low demand means that it is effectively hand-made (that is, no mass production) for each tiny batch.
@@AppliedScience You should test whenever it can be initiated with mechanical shock like a hammer blow, might yield interesting results 😊
I would think you'd want very sharp tools to disturb the material stack as little as possible.
@@AppliedScience look into "arrested reactive milling", it's another way to make this metastable material.
That’s a really nice mug.
Fascinating stuff, thank you for stretching my horizon with every video!
Love the capacitor mug in the background!
Wow, this is yet another glimpse into the future of manufacturing, like ultraviolet welding, and sonic welding.
5:34 for something as large as that (high thermal mass) preheating all parts to say 100C or 120C will help. As an experienced "big" PCB reworker, the bond had all the visuals of a way-too-cold joint. On smaller parts (1-2% of the mass you used ) it would have probably been a much better bond.
Heck even a domestic hairdyer may help (I use one as a preheater to do PCB work on large PCBs and large components with lead-free solder such as power transformers, large RF screens and stripline filters)
The magic of nanofoil, when done properly, is that it can effectively bond large thermal masses at room temperature, without flux or special atmosphere. This makes it possible for an engineering shop, rather than an EMS or rework shop, to do the work.
I believe there is an explosive smokeless delay fuse that works in a similar fashion. I know it uses a wire passed through a dissimilar metal tube. One of the metals is Palladium the other is aluminium or a silver copper mix. When heated at one end,the metals, melt, forming an aloy, releasing considerable amounts of heat. The advantage is ignition without the release of any smoke or gas. I think it is sold under the trade name pyrofuze.
Looks like something a machine could do during a manufacturing process;. Great video, that slo-mo really helps.
This is super stuff AS. Look forward to try this stuff myself. Nice work.
Quite a lot of light, reminds of old flash bulbs
"This message will self destruct in 10 seconds."
Try initiating the reaction by squeezing it real hard and then adding a bit more by striking it with a small hammer. This might enable it to initiate in multiple points at once, creating an even faster heat pulse.
You're so cute when you show us awesome products!
This is so cool! Also i love that capacitor mug!
Like a mini Higgs mechanism sombrero! So cool. You do the best science vids on the whole website 😊
Yet another piece of knowledge to show how much I struggle to understand thermodynamics.
I didn't expect it to be such a quick video. Knowing this channel I woul've thought you'd try to make it yourself.
I need that coffee mug in my life.
Love the can capacitor coffee mug !!
Thank you! This is incredibly useful. I didn't know of such material. This would definitely be useful for transducer/signal source mounts without destroying parts with extended heat.
Fascinating material!
Thanks for sharing this fascinating material!
That is indeed, a very cool material
Hmm, love stuff like this, always gets me thinking. If its just heat needed, will the reaction start with a hard hit from a ball peen hammer? or does that mess with the material layers before they have a chance to start reacting?
This is extremely fascinating!!
You should be able to use this to solder a heatsink to a CPU to maximize thermal coupling, improving the thermal dissipation, thus allowing one to overclock for higher performance.
But that works fine with other metals that just have a low melting point.
I feel like there’d be a lot of bubbles from the heated air.
Palladium/Aluminum wollaston process wire is impressive, if I remember correctly.
The heat of solution of these two metals is enormous.
Really cool application👍
yay, my favorite notification! love you Ben!
That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing!
**I WANT THAT LIQUIDENERGY MUG RIGHT NOW**
It would be even funnier if it had the capacity be the actual amount of fluid it holds!
Holy crap, that coffee mug is awesome
kind of reminds me of thermite, except without the exchange of oxygen. i wonder if this would work with aluminum and nickel powder?
definitely, if there is no oxide (or any other compound for that matter) layer.
Many materials do that already, it's not like the concept is new. For example mercury and sodium form an alloy (amalgam) and release a lot of energy. Most others release much less though.
Thanks Ben. I don’t have experimenter scientist friends, so I am so grateful to have awesome videos from nice creative people like you.
came from nilered thank you for supporting him
Really cool! Thanks for sharing!
I discovered something similar. I own a heat treating company any while processing Titanimum I noticed a weird in phenomenon. I heated the Titanimum to about 1600° and water quenched. Then back home to the oven and then as it was heating all the sudden a real bright spot started at an edge that was brighter then the black body color of the oven. This bright spot traveled through the entire disk of Titanimum quickly. Now the entire dial was glowing much brighter then the actual inside of the oven. This did not happen the first time I heated it. Don’t know what caused it but it was VERY noticeable and maybe had to do with the crystal structure changing. It was grade 2 Titanimum disks that where about .02” thick.
Sounds like your titanium has just oxidised from a catalyst that had migrated onto the disc surface.
Great as always!
Very cool! Would be interesting to see them stacked.
Thank you, I have found it quite interesting
Really enjoyed the video
always enjoy your videos
I imagine if we can make a grid/mesh/brush-shape from the heating material, experimenting with surface area, we can get interesting results
the biggest detriment to soldering is surface oxidation, also in preparing your thin piece of solder if you didn't use enough flux or kept it molten to long it may have become oxidized
A similar alloy reaction was used to make smokeless delay fuses for explosives.
The fuses were made from a pair of thin concentric wires made of two different metals.
When ignited, the two metals combined to form an alloy that liberated considerable heat in the process. As no smoke, or gas, is generated in the reaction, the fuse can be completely enclosed, it also does not require oxygen.
I think these nano foils still have a similar application.
Thanks for the videos!
that's awesome it kind of works the in the same manner as a stud welder, an instant burst of heat that does not really heat the bulk material much at all.
Hi Applied Science,
Nice video again.
The phenomenon is known in the explosive and propellant field as two fine ribbons of metal that are intricated or twisted and that could be ignitated by a spark or heat by generating high luminosity, fusion and alloying of the two metals with help of atomic mixing and entropic desorder (chaos).
It is thus a purely entropic process and doesn't involve oxido-reduction or chemical reaction.
The name refers to into English (or into French) to "coruscative alloy mix" (sometimes written as corruscative in old texts) (aliage coruscatif)
It doesn't per se require to be thin (submicronic or nano) but it speeds things up because of the intimacy of the solid reactants... just like grinding finer oxidiser and reducers into a pyrotechnic mix will speed up the burning rate to several MACHs instead of slow burning.
It is written in one of my Explosives 4th Edition book from Rudolf Meyer to be able to acheive a burning rate of a few meters/s and some mixes up to a few 100 meters propagation rate (usually lower than MACH 1 - thus a bit like a deflagrating material - low burning explosive material - often below or much below sound spead in air and especially into the material - speed of sound in hard metals can be up to 1-6 km/s) what contrast a lot with usual detonating materials (detonating at 3.000 m/s (about MACH 10) up to 10.000m/s (about MACH 28 yes))
I hope this will help you a bit.
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum) -
(and A.O.L. (alt. engr. chemistry, alt. engr. explosives, rec. sci. pyrotechnics, ...))
Use gold and silver alloy films and solder circuit boards.
Just after this material was invented, and I would swear they were using aluminum-titanium layers at that time, I saw a company chemist demonstrated it at a chemical industry convention. Item 1, he had brought the material to the convention in his personal luggage on an airplane (gulp). And 2, a potential app was using it to glue ceramic armor to armor plate for tanks. Funny stuff.
I don't see the problem with bringing this on a plane. It isn't going to self initiate.
Despite it being "hot" and "reacting fast", it is signifigantly less dangerous to the plane than plenty of other benign stuff we carry all the time.
It has to be well-packaged. Simply snapping a corner off can sometimes initiate the reaction.
Ben: As usual you kicked ass with this!!
Fascinating stuff! Can think of a lot of uses, most of them explosive 🙂
Yea, I wonder what a pound of that would do. It doesn't produce any gas so more of an incendiary than explosive.
@@gordonwedman3179 I was thinking of the use as a igniter.
interesting material, both aluminum and nickel work well to very thin plating so you could be able to plate both in alternating processes
Great video, interesting material
I wonder if it would work better with solder paste. You could either dispense it or vary the pressure to change the layer thickness.
A significant charge stored in this capacitor mug, ~3.5 gigajoules (821 mega calories). Now I see the source of the energy for all this magnificent things you are doing ..
At 2:11, you can see that the reaction starts at one electrode. This reminds me of welding talk, where the polarity of the electrode is said to increase or decrease the "heat" in the weld.
in the soldering experiment, the foil ends up as part of the joint. Solder does not stick to aluminum. At 6:01 you can see the solder sticking to the brass but not where the square piece of foil was sitting.
So I'm not sure how this would be done in a commercial application keeping the foil from contaminating the joint.
That's really wild. It's like a corner case in physics.
Seems like this would make an excellent ignition source for rocketry. I'm specifically thinking of so-called "solid-state rockets" where the thrust comes from propellent stored in wells on the surface of a block. Each well is able to be individually triggered by controlling hardware. They're intended for use in satellite station-keeping in situations where other methods aren't viable due to mission length or other factors.
Yes! This would probably solve my ignition source conundrum I’ve been stuck on.
2:10 Hi Ben. In the slow motion shots, we can clearly see the reaction front, as you described in you video. The front begins always only from one of the electrodes.
Does it begin from the negative electrode? If yes, is it because electrons "land" there first?
If we assume that the positive and negative electrodes have the same contact area, shouldn't the "local" current flow be the same, so the same resistance and hence the same temperature rise?
What will happen if you place multiple negative electrodes (or whichever is first) to spread the current flow at the contact points? Will we observe multiple reaction fronts or the reaction will start from the other electode?
What if you increase both the negative and positive contact areas, like across opposite edges of the square? Is there going to be a front again or the metal will combust "instantly" all over its surface?
Last question: The material must have a minimum temperature at which the reaction begins. Can you heat the whole piece gradually to that point and see if it reacts instantly?
Fascinating -thanks.
So wait, this material is literally just super-thin laminations of nickel and aluminum? That's wild.
more like an evaporated nickel coating over an evaporated alu coating, carefully repeated 512 times over
seems like a useful material for non-explosive actuators
very interesting material
(Made some major edits, to clarify about using thicker metal sheet for bonding before rolling, atmospheric control, etc. Think making this stuff by adapting solid-state bonded mokume gane techniques if you want the tldr)
You might be able to make this stuff using a electric kiln (w/ atmospheric control) + enough force clamping many layers of thicker metal together (they would need to be extremely clean) to solid state fuse a large billet, and then run it through a rolling mill til you reach the desired inter-layer thickness.
You can make basic modifications to a standard kiln to achieve atmospheric control and keep oxygen out. I run a kiln with pure hydrogen atmosphere (generated from a PEM electrolyzer), and a bubbler for flashback protection for the 'exhaust' (when I need a reducing atmosphere)- although something like argon is probably more sensible/safer for a use case like this. Regardless, I've never experienced any flashback/combustion after a few minutes purge.
How would you avoid oxides forming?
I'd bet they alternate plating each layer to the previous one.
@@Prophes0r If you look up modern techniques for solid-state fusion of the bullet for mokume gane, you simply use atmospheric control inside the kiln. It is super simple to modify a standard kiln to run gas through and keep oxygen out.
I run my kiln (when heat treating gemstones that need a reducing atmosphere) with pure hydrogen and have never experienced any flashback from the hydrogen combusting (although I do use a bubbler for flashback protection where the most of the gas leaves).
I've also run it (when I need an oxidizing atmospherel with oxygen from a repurposed medical O2 concentrator, and an O2/O3 mix by putting an ozone generator in tandem with the O2 concentrator- although I'm not sure if the ozone survives to do anything once the kiln temp is high enough.
@@Prophes0r (Added the details about atmospheric control to the original post)
@@sophiophile I'm not saying you can't get a good environment to keep oxidation from happening.
I'm asking how you would get the thin layers of Aluminum into the sandwich without it oxidising. Like, before you get the kiln and clamp involved.
Where does the thin, Oxygen-free Aluminum feedstock come from?
And if you can get Oxygen-free feedstock, does your feedstock production process benefit from adding the kiln step rather than making it directly bonded to the Nickel layer?
That's why I keep saying it should just be alternating plating steps for simplicity and control.
Also, remember that this is a heat initiated process. These metals WANT to react. They don't need anything external to do so other than energy/heat. If you give them enough heat to bond the layers in a kiln, you are giving them enough heat to initiate a reaction and alloy.
@@Prophes0r Plating may very well work too (although the time and cost would be extremely high), but I don't think the concerns you are mentioning would interfere with the process I suggested.
There are very common pretreatments (nitric acid bath for one) that remove the oxide layer from aluminum. I have never bonded aluminum this way, however. I have done it with other metals that form oxide skins, and successfully bonded layers while removing oxide using only abrasive processes.
Also, you don't have to worry about setting off the material because you solid state bond many layers of *thicker metal*, and then using a rolling mill to reduce the thickness of the fused billet. (The traditional way is roll into half thickness, cut it in half and stack them, roll again, repeat over and over until you achieve the per-layer thickness you want). You never expose metal that is thin enough to ignite to the heat of the kiln.
I guess the only way to know for sure would be to try!
Maybe add some flux, zinc chloride, in small amounts. Can be water soluble flux or oil based flux which contains Oleic Acid. The flux cleans or preps the metal and acts like a carrier of the solder. Wherever the flux is applied, the solder will follow.
This sure seems strange!
1) Soldering without flux? Of course the solder didn't want to wet the surface? They actually do this without any kind of flux? Maybe if you gold plated both surfaces first to prevent oxidization?
2) What happens to the reactive metal in the joint? I thought nickel did not dissolve into tin very well? Or is this material so thin that it is able to entirely dissolve?
Indium corporation claims the process works without flux, but one detail I may have missed is that the substrates should be tin plated. One of the other commenters said the process works without solder if the tin thickness is correct. The NiAl compound stays in the joint. It's not the strongest material, but this type of bonding is usually done for thermal transfer and light mechanical loads. Another neat benefit is that it can bond materials with dissimilar thermal expansion coefficients since the bulk of the material never heats up during soldering.
Flux! Joins aren't wetting because the solder isn't getting the components hot enough. Solder is oxidizing before it sticks to the bronze, but sicking perfectly to the nickel-aluminum. if you can't flux the joint, eliminate the oxygen in a vaccuum chamber, then ensure the joint has solder continuously between components.
It might be that oxidation is the issue, i have used boric acid dissolved in alcohol as a flux before, it leaves a very thin film when the ethanol flashes off.