Collaborate Disseminate
You may know William Blake as a poet, or even as #38 in the BBC’s 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. But did you know that Blake was also …read more Continue reading William Blake Was Etching Copper in 1790
Atomic force microscopy, laser ablation, and etching with a witches brew of toxic chemicals: sounds like [Zachary Tong] has been playing in the lab again, and this time he found …read more Continue reading Getting a Fly’s-Eye View with Microfabricated Lens Arrays
Refining precious metals is not as simple as polishing rocks that have been dug out of the ground. Often, complex chemical processes are needed to process the materials properly or in high quantities, but these processes leave behind considerable waste. Often, there are valuable metals left over in these wastes, …read more
Decapsulating ICs used to be an exotic technique. (I should know, I did that professionally for one of the big IC vendors back in the 1980s.) These days, more and more people are learning to take apart ICs for a variety of reasons. If you are interested in doing it …read more
If there’s a chemical with a cooler name than “fuming nitric acid,” we can’t think of it. Nearly pure nitric acid is useful stuff, especially if you’re in the business of making rocket fuels and explosives. But the low-end nitric acid commonly available tops out at about 68% pure, so if you want the good stuff, you’ll have to synthesize fuming nitric acid yourself. (And by “good stuff”, we mean be very careful with the resulting product.)
Fuming nitric acid comes in two colors – red fuming nitric acid (RFNA), which is about 90% pure and has some dissolved nitrogen …read more
