NurdRage - 2018-05-01
In this video we make copper formate, a useful precursor to copper conductive ink. We simply dissolve 65g of copper sulfate in 250mL of water and 33g of sodium carbonate in 150mL of water. Then we mix the two together. Copper carbonate hydroxide precipitates and we filter that off. Then we react the copper carbonate hydroxide with formic acid to create copper formate. Copper formate has the useful property that it decomposes into copper metal (along with carbon dioxide and hydrogen) when heated. The copper produced this way isn't well bonded and not very conductive. But in upcoming videos additives may be added to improve the quality of the product. Related videos: Silver conductive ink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBlqPS8boLI Copper sulfate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dUSF9Gl0xE Formic acid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceL-I0azPH8 Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS Glassware generously provided by http://www.alchemylabsupply.com/ Use the discount code "nurdrage" for a 5% discount. Social media links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/NurdRage Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NurdRageYoutube/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurdrageyoutube/
As a 1st year electrical engineering student, I appreciate how some of your videos bridge the gap between chemistry and electronics.
Thanks for watching!
Yes me thinks there working with the stuff that reads the though wave! There just not telling us! But that is old tec. from the master race before us ! Look at Billy Mire stuff , the sound that ship is making is the sound of the colours . We know because we can hear the colours now ! Ect .. eyeborg
For a split second, I got formate and fulminate mixed up, so I got really confused why you wanted to use it as a conductive ink!
Fulminate based ink? You could write an explosive best seller.
Ouch. That would be a very dangerous pen. It might be mightier than a sword without even writing anything.
Thank you for making me interested in chemistry
Please make more inorganic salts! Also I've been waiting for this reaction, so thank you! 👍
I always thought that thermal decomposition would give CuO, interesting
The formate ion is in itself a weak reducing agent, that's why it gives copper metal. Higher carboxylic acids can also do that (acetate), but they also carbonize in the process, formate just gives off CO2 and water.
That's brilliant and helpful! I'm going to try this myself! This might actually fix a problem in my research. I'll credit you if it does. Thx.
Cool. I've been hoping you might do a reactive copper ink, thanks so much for this.
I think I synthesised it. I was dissolving Al in CuSO4, decanting Cu particles. They turned dark upon drying = oxide. So I tossed some formic acid 85% in and got substance of beutiful azure color. Much nicer than what I see in video, actually. But that may be due to camera or monitor or both.
Also, i have seen Robert Murray-Smith make copper powder using vitamin C as a reducing agent.
The legend is back! Woohoo!!!! 🍆💦
Awesome video could you do a show on making a copper strike solution . I've also heard of woods plating liquid. I'm looking for a way to nickle plate aluminium without having to zincate the aluminium first thanks for the info
B L U E V I T R I O L
YEAH
@Muhammad Ismail Bin Rosani BLUE VITRIOL IS GREAT, BUT REAL VITRIOL TAKES THE CAKE
I've wondered whether copper formate could be used for through-hole plating.
I know there is a way to do it at home which involves thermal decomposition of copper hypophosphite. It would be nice to be able to do the same thing with copper formate.
Look forward to seeing your future experiments down this path.
Hi sir, can you do some more simple inorganic chemistry videos? 😁
Did you try precipitating a second layer the same way? Might improve conductivity...
My hotplate stirrer will get here day after tomorrow :) I'm pretty pumped.
Thanks for the information. As electronics engineer, and also a PCB maker, i can say that this isnt suitable for Through hole plating, because holes has to be plated in around 35um - 50um thickness of really conductive metal (such as silver, copper, solder or other materials), but holes has to be "though", because you will stick component leads through them. Also, not reliable, but still, sience is in the 1st place :)
NurdRage i have a question for you could i use this in a copper platting setup?
Cool video nuuurd <3
if this stuff sticks to steel at all it could make a good copper plating or similar to parkerizing solution?
I don't know why it struck me in this video but I never really think of the vital role water plays in chemistry. I guess because I can drink it, I don't really think of it as a solvent or otherwise chemically interesting.
Do you think the boiling action of the solution created the voids in the resulting copper? Would it be possible to evaporate it then heat it (not sure if the heat is necessary for it to convert to metallic copper)
Revel in your existence as a chemical reaction.
You need to sinter copper particles to increase conductivity
i tested formaldehyde way
HCHO(aq)+ NaOH → Na(HCO2)+ H2 than
2CuSO4+4Na(HCO2) → 2Cu(HCO2)2+2Na2SO4
Being much more of an electronics nurd than a chemistry nurd... these episodes are always welcome.
maybe if you added some other copper salt to it, the formate can reduce the excess copper and form a more solid ink
Nice, finaly. Now have to get you 808nm laser, It should decompose with that also.
maybe not 808nm, but 405nm for sure does.
https://hackaday.io/project/103142-printed-circuit-boards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1NS95dGPdU
what if mix ammonium
Did you ever do the vijaeo on the process of making mini circuit boards what for the angry pixies as you said electrical enginerds use?
I've been playing around with trying to make something like that for a while now, without success.
How small are the Cu particles? Can they be suspended in water or acetone, or are they too big and settle out too fast?
Usually commercial conductive inks use incredibly tiny metal particles suspended in a solvent along with some kind of binder.
Finding the right binder and how much of it is where I'm stuck.
Either the particles don't stick together, or the binder is too much and there is no conductivity at all.
rusted layer before produced ? ))) try to make something more neutrally )
Thank's I'll give this a try (perhaps I will mess around with some solvent to precipitate it out because I'm impatient to wait for weeks to evaporate) maybe you can give it a try and cover the copper (II) hypophosphite since the literature is scarce and from H3PO2 (50% aq.) and the above prepared Cu(OH)2CO3 I get a dark brown precipitate that I expect to be metallic particles due to the reductive properties of the acid (which isn't forbidden here and I have enough of, though salts of it are missing from my collection). All I found was methods to prepare it in solution from Ca++ salt to be used for electronics... I couldn't even find info on the color of the salt which I intend to use as a catalyst additive. Keep up the good work!
I would also love to have some good candidates for viscous conducter besides mercury
Galinstan? Or whatever other mix of gallium, indium and tin works at the temperature you want it to.
Such alloys are available as "liquid metal thermal compound".
Gallium and indium have a tendency to stick to glass however so the oldfashioned tilt switches would not work :(
fischX
Alloys are poor conductors usually
How is the conductivity after also using the tin plating process?
wouldnt copper oxalate thermally decompose into copper metal, similar to iron oxalate?
Great video!
Smart. That's the only thing I can say
You are a scholar and a gentleman and I enjoy your content. I am very much looking forward to the through hole plating experiment!
Can use ammonium hydroxide instead of formic acid ?
There's an experiment where copper powder is made conductive.
Oversimplified: By attaching an antenna to a jar of copper powder, the current induced in the antenna by lightning strikes in the area welds the powder particles together making the non-conductive mass conductive.
Perhaps an electric spark of the right amplitude could make the "ink" conductive after the reaction?
How much for 1 gram?
I rarely understand what's happening but it's still cool to watch. Maybe someday I'll try making copper sulfate crystals as a display piece.
Great!
No subtitles this time?
being made right now. it takes awhile
the way you made the formate of copper can be used to prepare almost every salt of copper by starting with cuso4 and the acid of the corresponding salt. I personally made copper chloride through this way. Also if fine cu powder is needed for being used as a catalyst this formate salt works great. love it
Would it be more usefull to use as a soft metal alloy i.e. add tin to improve the conductivity of the metal instead of what id imagine is just stacked layers of large copper sheets kinda like paint.
Try 2 or 3 layers of the ink?
Thats the problem with this series of metals. Though they can form cohesive structures with themselves, they tend to want to form particles rather than a plating without some sort of extra charge to guide their formation. There are a few things you could try, like charging the surface to be plated and dragging the cathode over the surface, but thats no different from standard electroplating. The other thing could be is to manipulate Cu ions in solution, let it dry and reducing them by dipping the surface in a reducing agent. The last techinque that comes to mind is to acid etch the surface so the copper particle settle into the micrscopic valleys.
Getting copper to bond with itself as a solid without electrocatylitic techniques as you can with the mirror demo isn't anything I've ever heard of, and may require much slower decomposition rates than seen in the video, but is still likely to be too porous and brittle to be useful.
If you can think of a way to form stronger bonds between the copper particles, this decomposition process has some promise, otherwise i think its just a novelty.
I noticed that in a reducing environment copper cold-welds quite well, so connecting the particles up with an external force could be possible. But that's hard to do in an application as ink.
But it also forms alloys with zinc or tin quite well. Maybe this is a way to connect up the copper particles. Creating a two stage process. First creating the copper and then fusing it together with an other meal. This would reduce the conductivity but it would be possible to solder on it.
Also an other reaction comes to mind. First creating iron particles and then reacting these with copper sulfate, to create copper and iron sulfate. This will make the particle "swell" slightly make it possible to connect up the different particles.
Also a problem is to bind the copper to the underlying surface. To make copper hold onto the surface it has to form a continuous layer, otherwise it will disconnect from it.
It's not an easy problem to solve....
I wonder if a mix of copper formate and silver formate would work better.
@stamasd
Not sure it would work. The copper could force the decomposing of the silver formate. Instable chemicals are prone to decomposing in a impure environment. But my chemistry knowledge is not good enough to state that as fact.
I think there may be a way to find out. What could that be, hmm...
I'm reading up on mixtures of salts of formic acid, and it looks to me that silver and copper would form a complex. But i have no idea what that would mean for the forming of a contentious layer compared to irregular crystals while decomposing. Copper tend to build 3 Dimensional structures and this is the basic problem as far as i understand it.
While searching i found this:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45150
It describes the effects of mixing copper nano particles with copper formate to create better conductive incs.
In addition reacting tin with copper format could produce such fine particles. Sadly while decomposing tin formate the tin oxydizes. (the same for zinc formate, as i understand it) Even in a oxygen free environment.
I don't know of the top of my head an organic compound that decomposes at the same temperature as the formates to create an reducing environment strong enough to suppress the oxidation.
How about a video on how to make NaCN from potassium ferrocyanide including avoiding the brown polymer(rapid mixing)and avoid sodium formate and ammonia from decomposing of NaCN(use 2-3percent extra NaOH).NaCN water solutions degrade at a rate of 0.1percent daily!
Why not decompose under a stream of N2 gas to prevent oxidation.
NurdRage - 2018-05-01
No, this is NOT blue meth.
Nikola Jambrović - 2018-05-01
3rd video in less than a week? It must be an early Christmas :o
Demetrius M - 2018-05-01
Alright mr white....
stamasd - 2018-05-01
Of course it's not blue meth. It's more of an azure.
Joey Thomas Law - 2018-10-12
I'm down to see a through-hole plating vid
Zakrana Epsilon - 2019-01-11
This Reaction You Did Is Basic Copper Carbonate or Hydroxide & Formic Acid, But Copper Sulphate Directly React With Sodium Formate To Make Sodium Sulphate & Copper Formate & It Fomic Acid + Hydrogen Peroxide + Copper! You should make longer video of mutiple reaction that Produced Same Product! It Work For Any Organic Acid like Acetic or Larger Fatty Acid. Fatty Acid Are Not Soluble In Water So We Used It Salt (Soap) & Copper Chloride or Sulphate