Today, Victoria Vesna, one of the directors of the Science / Art Nanolab, presented the Daily introduction. We were then given about an hour and a half to work on our final project before lunch. After lunch, experiments were set up for us – FerroFluids and Photolithography. These hands-on labs directly showed me the connection between art and science.
For the FerroFluids, we had to mix many chemicals together, including ammonium hydroxide, FeCl2 and FeCl3. We started by mixing FeCl2 and FeCl3 together. The next step was to slowly drop ammonium hydroxide into the mixture. As we progressed, the liquid slowly started to turn darker, and eventually turned charcoal black. We placed the magnet underneath the beaker the mixture was in, and the magnetite particles in the liquid slowly sunk down to the bottom of the container, attracted to the magnet. The remaining liquid was poured out. The magnetite particles had to be rinsed a couple of times before we could experiment with it, but when we did, they did not seem to work properly. Photolithography was next, allowing us to create our own chips with an embedded personalized image in it. We drew our image into a transparency and fit it into our chip. It was then put under UV rays for about twelve minutes. The chip had to but dipped in two different types of liquids – one that was about 259 degrees celcius – for about forty seconds each. When the liquids were rinsed off, the image was embedded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid
http://mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/background/ferrofluid/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBxCnHU8Ao
http://www.ece.gatech.edu/research/labs/vc/theory/photolith.html